THE    INTELLIGENCE 
OF  WOMAN 


By  W.  I,.   GEORGE 

The  Strangers'  Wedding 
The  Second  Blooming 
A  Bed  of  Roses 
The  City  of  Light 
Until  the  Day  Break 
The  Little  Beloved 
Olga  Nazimov 
Woman  and  To-Morrow 
Dramatic  Actualities 
Anatole  France 


THE    INTELLIGENCE 
OF  WOMAN 


BY 


W.   L.   GEORGE 


BOSTON 

LITTLE,  BROWN,  AND   COMPANY 

1916 


Copyright,  ig/6, 
By  W.  L.  George. 

All  rights  reserved 
Published,  November,  1916 


Nortoooto  $r«£i 

Set  up  and  electrotyped  by  J.  S.  Cushing  Co.,  Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 

Presswork  by  S.  J.  Parkhill  &  Co.,  Boston,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


CONTENTS 


I  The  Intelligence  of  Woman 

II  Feminist  Intentions 

III  Uniforms  for  Women 

IV  Woman  and  the  Paint  Pot    . 
V  The  Downfall  of  the  Home 

VI  The  Break-up  of  the  Family 

VII  Some  Notes  on  Marriage 


i 

61 

94 
119 
130 

165 

204 


I 

THE  INTELLIGENCE  OF  WOMAN 


Men  have  been  found  to  deny  woman  an  in- 
tellect ;  they  have  credited  her  with  instinct,  with 
intuition,  with  a  capacity  to  correlate  cause  and 
effect  much  as  a  dog  connects  its  collar  with  a 
walk.  But  intellect  in  its  broadest  sense,  the 
capacity  consecutively  to  plan  and  steadfastly 
to  execute,  they  have  often  denied  her. 

The  days  are  not  now  so  dark.  Woman  has  a 
place  in  the  state,  a  place  under,  but  still  a  place. 
Man  has  recognized  her  value  without  coming  to 
understand  her  much  better,  and  so  we  are  faced 
with  a  paradox :  while  man  accords  woman  an 
improved  social  position,  he  continues  to  describe 
her  as  illogical,  petty,  jealous,  vain,  untruthful, 
disloyal  to  her  own  sex;  quite  as  frequently  he 
charges  her  with  being  over-loyal  to  her  own  sex : 
there  is  no  pleasing  him.     Also  he  discerns  in  this 

i 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF   WOMAN 

unsatisfactory  creature  extreme  unselfishness, 
purity,  capacity  for  self-sacrifice.  It  seems  that 
the  intelligence  of  man  cannot  solve  the  problem  of 
woman,  which  is  a  bad  sign  in  a  superior  intelli- 
gence. The  trouble  lies  in  this :  man  assumes  too 
readily  that  woman  essentially  differs  from  man. 
Hardly  a  man  has  lived  who  did  not  so  exaggerate. 
Nietzsche,  Schopenhauer,  agreed  to  despise  women  ; 
Napoleon  seemed  to  view  them  as  engines  of  pleas- 
ure; for  Shakespeare  they  may  well  have  em- 
bodied a  romantic  ideal,  qualified  by  sportive 
wantonness.  In  Walter  Scott,  women  appear  as 
romance  in  a  cheap  edition ;  Byron  in  their  regard 
is  a  beast  of  prey,  Doctor  Johnson  a  pompous 
brute  and  a  puritanical  sensualist.  Cervantes 
mixed  in  his  romantic  outlook  a  sort  of  suspicious 
hatred,  while  Alexandre  Dumas  thought  them  born 
only  to  lay  laurel  wreaths  and  orange  blossoms 
(together  with  coronets)  on  the  heads  of  musket- 
eers. All,  all  —  from  Thackeray,  who  never 
laid  his  hand  upon  a  woman  save  in  the  way  of 
patronage,  to  Goethe,  to  Dante,  to  Montaigne, 
to  Wellington  —  all  harbored  this  curious  idea : 
in  one  way  or  another  woman  differs  from  man. 
And  to-day,  whether  we  read  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw, 
Mr.    George   Moore,    M.   Paul   Bourget,   or   Mr. 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF   WOMAN 

Hall   Caine,   we  find   that  there  still  persists  a 
belief  in  Byron's  lines  :  — 

"  What  a  strange  thing  is  man  !    And  what  a  stranger 
Is  woman ! " 

Almost  every  man,  except  the  professional 
Lovelace  (and  he  knows  nothing),  believes  in  the 
mystery  of  woman.  I  do  not.  For  men  are  also 
mysterious  to  women ;  women  are  quite  as  puzzled 
by  our  stupidity  as  by  our  subtlety.  I  do  not 
believe  that  there  is  either  a  male  or  a  female 
mystery;  there  is  only  the  mystery  of  mankind. 
There  are  to-day  differences  between  the  male  and 
the  female  intellect;  we  have  to  ask  ourselves 
whether  they  are  absolute  or  only  apparent,  or 
whether  they  are  absolute  but  removable  by 
education  and  time,  assuming  this  to  be  desirable. 
I  believe  that  these  differences  are  superficial, 
temporary,  traceable  to  hereditary  and  local  in- 
fluences. I  believe  that  they  will  not  endure  for- 
ever, that  they  will  tend  to  vanish  as  environ- 
ment is  modified,  as  old  suggestions  cease  to 
be  made. 

This  leads  us  to  consider  present  idiosyncrasies 
in  woman  as  a  sex,  her  apparently  low  and  appar- 
ently high  impulses,  her  exaltations,  and,  in  the 

3 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF  WOMAN 

light  of  her  achievements,  her  future.  I  do  not 
want  to  generalize  hastily.  The  subject  is  too 
complex  and  too  obscure  for  me  to  venture  so 
to  do,  and  I  would  ask  my  readers  to  remember 
throughout  this  chapter  that  I  am  not  laying  down 
the  law,  but  trying  only  to  arrive  at  the  greatest 
possible  frequency  of  truth.  This  is  a  short  re- 
search of  tendencies.  There  are  human  tendencies, 
such  as  belief  in  a  divine  spirit,  painting  pictures, 
making  war,  composing  songs.  Are  there  any 
special  female  tendencies  ?  Given  that  we  glimpse 
what  distinguishes  man  from  the  beast,  is  there 
anything  that  distinguishes  woman  from  man? 
In  the  small  space  at  my  disposal  I  cannot  pretend 
to  deal  extensively  with  the  topic.  One  reason  is 
the  difficulty  of  securing  true  evidence.  Questions 
addressed  to  women  do  not  always  yield  the 
truth;  nor  do  questions  addressed  to  men;  for 
a  desire  to  please,  vanity,  modesty,  interfere.  But 
the  same  question  addressed  to  a  woman  may, 
according  to  circumstances,  be  sincerely  answered 
in  four  ways,  — 

i.   Truthfully,  with  a  defensive  touch,  if  she  is 
alone  with  another  woman. 

2.   With  intent  to  cause  male  rivalry  if  she  is 
with  two  men. 

4 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF  WOMAN 

3.  With  false  modesty  and  seductive  evasiveness 
if  she  is  with  one  man  and  one  woman. 

4.  With  a  clear  intention  to  repel  or  attract  if 
she  is  with  a  man  alone. 

And  there  are  variations  of  these  four  cases ! 
A  man  investigating  woman's  points  of  view  often 
finds  the  response  more  emotional  than  intellectual. 
Owing  to  the  system  under  which  we  live,  where 
man  is  a  valuable  prey,  woman  has  contracted  the 
habit  of  trying  to  attract.  Even  aggressive  in- 
solence on  her  part  may  conceal  the  desire  to  at- 
tract by  exasperating.  These  notes  must,  there- 
fore, be  taken  only  as  hints,  and  the  reader  may 
be  interested  to  know  that  they  are  based  on  the 
observation  of  sixty-five  women,  subdivided  as 
follows :  Intimate  acquaintance,  five ;  adequate 
acquaintance,  nineteen ;  slight  acquaintance,  forty- 
one;  married,  thirty-nine;  status  uncertain, 
eight;  celibate,  eighteen.  Ages,  seventeen  to 
sixty-eight  (average  age,  about  thirty-five). 

2 

It  is  most  difficult  to  deduce  the  quality  of 
woman's  intellect  from  her  conduct,  because  her 
impulses  are  frequently  obscured  by  her  policy. 
The  physical  circumstances  of  her  life  predispose 

5 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF   WOMAN 

her  to  an  interest  in  sex  more  dominant  than  is 
the  case  with  man.  As  intellect  flies  out  through 
the  window  when  emotion  comes  in  at  the  door, 
this  is  a  source  of  complications.  The  interven- 
tion of  love  is  a  difficulty,  for  love,  though  blind, 
is  unfortunately  not  dumb,  and  habitually  uses 
speech  for  the  concealment  of  truth.  It  does  this 
with  the  best  of  intentions,  and  the  best  of  inten- 
tions generally  yield  the  worst  of  results.  It 
should  be  said  that  sheer  intellect  is  very  seldom 
displayed  by  man.  Intellect  is  the  ideal  skeleton 
of  a  man's  mental  power.  It  may  be  denned  as 
an  aspiration  toward  material  advantage,  absolute 
truth,  or  achievement,  combined  with  a  capacity 
for  taking  steps  toward  successful  achievement  or 
attaining  truth.  From  this  point  of  view  such 
men  as  Napoleon,  Machiavelli,  Epictetus,  Leo  XIII, 
Bismarck,  Voltaire,  Anatole  France,  are  typical  in- 
tellectuals. They  are  not  perfect :  all,  so  far  as 
we  can  tell,  are  tainted  with  moral  feeling  or  emo- 
tion, —  a  frailty  which  probably  explains  why 
there  has  never  been  a  British  or  American  in- 
tellectual of  the  first  rank.  Huxley,  Spencer, 
Darwin,  Cromwell,  all  alike  suffered  grievously 
from  good  intentions.  The  British  and  American 
mind    has    long    been    honeycombed    with    moral 

6 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF   WOMAN 

impulse,  at  any  rate  since  the  Reformation;  it 
is  very  much  what  the  German  mind  was  up  to 
the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Intellect, 
as  I  conceive  it,  is  seeing  life  sanely  and  seeing  it 
whole,  without  much  pity,  without  love;  seeing 
life  as  separate  from  man,  whose  pains  and 
delights  are  only  phenomena;  seeing  love  as  a 
reaction  to  certain  stimuli. 

In  this  sense  it  can  probably  be  said  that  no 
woman  has  ever  been  an  intellectual.  A  few  may 
have  pretensions,  as,  for  instance,  "Vernon  Lee," 
Mrs.  Sidney  Webb,  Mrs.  Wharton,  perhaps  Mrs. 
Hetty  Green.  I  do  not  know,  for  these  women 
can  be  judged  only  by  their  works.  The  greatest 
women  in  history  —  Catherine  of  Russia,  Joan  of 
Arc,  Sappho,  Queen  Elizabeth  —  appear  to  have 
been  swayed  largely  by  their  passions,  physical 
or  religious.  I  do  not  suppose  that  this  will 
always  be  the  case.  For  reasons  which  I  shall 
indicate  further  on  in  this  chapter,  I  believe  that 
woman's  intellect  will  tend  toward  approximation 
with  that  of  man.  But  meanwhile  it  would  be  futile 
not  to  recognize  that  there  exist  to-day  between  man 
and  woman  some  sharp  intellectual  divergences. 

One  of  the  sharpest  lies  in  woman's  logical 
faculty.    This    may    be    due    to    her    education 

7 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF   WOMAN 

(which  is  seldom  mathematical  or  scientific) ;  it 
may  proceed  from  a  habit  of  mind;  it  may  be 
the  result  of  a  secular  withdrawal  from  responsi- 
bilities other  than  domestic.  Whatever  the  cause, 
it  must  be  acknowledged  that,  with  certain  trained 
exceptions,  woman  has  not  of  logic  the  same  con- 
ception as  man.  I  have  devoted  particular  care 
to  this  issue,  and  have  collected  a  number  of  cases 
where  the  feminine  conception  of  logic  clashes 
with  that  of  man.  Here  are  a  few  transcribed 
from  my  notebook : 

Case  33 

My  remark:  "Most  people  practice  a  religion 
because  they  are  too  cowardly  to  face  the  idea  of 
annihilation." 

Case  33  :  "I  don't  see  that  they  are  any  more 
cowardly  than  you.  It  doesn't  matter  whether  you 
have  a  faith  or  not,  it  will  be  all  the  same  in  the  end." 

The  reader  will  observe  that  Case  33  evades  the 
original  proposition ;  in  her  reply  she  ignores  the 
set  question,  namely  why  people  practice  a  religion. 

Case  17 

Votes  for  Women,  of  January  22,  1915,  prints  a 
parallel,  presumably  drawn  by  a  woman,  between 

8 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF   WOMAN 

two  police-court  cases.  In  the  first  a  man,  charged 
with  having  struck  his  wife,  is  discharged  because 
his  wife  intercedes  for  him.  In  the  second  a  woman, 
charged  with  theft,  is  sent  to  prison  in  spite  of  her 
husband's  plea.  The  writer  appears  to  think  that 
these  cases  are  parallel ;  the  difference  of  treatment 
of  the  two  offenders  offends  her  logic.  From  a 
masculine  point  of  view  two  points  differentiate 
the  cases : 

In  the  first  case  the  person  who  may  be  sent  to 
prison  is  the  bread-winner;  in  the  second  case  it 
is  the  housekeeper,  which  is  inconvenient  but  less 
serious. 

In  the  first  case  the  person  who  intercedes,  the 
wife,  is  the  one  who  has  suffered ;  in  the  second 
case  the  person  who  intercedes,  the  husband,  has 
not  suffered  injury.  The  person  who  has  suffered 
injury  is  the  one  who  lost  the  goods. 

Case  51 

This  case  is  peculiar  as  it  consists  in  frequent 
confusion  of  words.  The  woman  here  instanced 
referred  to  a  very  ugly  man  as  looking  Semitic. 
She  was  corrected  and  asked  whether  she  did  not 
mean  simian,  that  is,  like  a  monkey.  She  said, 
"Yes,"   but   that   Semitic   meant   looking   like   a 

9 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF   WOMAN 

monkey.  When  confronted  with  the  dictionary, 
she  was  compelled  to  acknowledge  that  the  two 
words  were  not  the  same,  but  persisted  in  calling 
the  man  Semitic,  and  seriously  explained  this  by 
asserting  that  Jews  look  like  monkeys. 

Case  51,  in  another  conversation,  referred  to  a 
man  who  had  left  the  Church  of  England  for  the 
Church  of  Rome  as  a  " pervert."  She  was  asked 
whether  she  did  not  mean  "convert." 

She  said,  "No,  because  to  become  a  Roman 
Catholic  is  the  act  of  a  pervert." 

As  I  thought  that  this  might  come  from  re- 
ligious animus,  I  asked  whether  a  Roman  Catholic 
who  entered  a  Protestant  church  was  also  a  pervert. 

Case  51  replied,  "Yes." 

Case  51  therefore  assumes  that  any  change  from 
an  original  state  is  abnormal.  The  application 
to  the  charge  of  bad  logic  consists  in  this  further 
test: 

I  asked  Case  51  whether  a  man  originally  brought 
up  in  Conservative  views  would  be  a  pervert  if  he 
became  a  Liberal. 

Case  51  replied,  "No." 

On  another  occasion  Case  51  referred  to  exag- 
gerated praise  showered  upon  a  popular  hero,  and 
said  that  the  newspapers  were  "belittling"  him. 

10 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF  WOMAN 

I  pointed  out  that  they  were  doing  the  very 
contrary;  that  indeed  they  were  exaggerating  his 
prowess. 

Confronted  with  the  dictionary,  and  the  mean- 
ing of  " belittle",  which  is  "to  cheapen  with  in- 
tent", she  insisted  that  " belittling"  was  the  cor- 
rect word  because  "the  result  of  this  exaggerated 
praise  was  to  make  the  man  smaller  in  her  own 
mind."  1 

Case  63 

In  the  course  of  a  discussion  on  the  war  in  which 
Case  6$   has  given  vent  to  moral  and  religious 
views,  she  remarks,  "Thou  shalt  not  kill." 
I :   "Then  do  you  accept  war?" 
Case  63  :   "War  ought  to  be  done  away  with." 
I  (attempting  to  get  a  straight  answer) :    "Do 
you  accept  war?" 

Case  63  :   "One  must  defend  one's  self." 
Upon  this  follows  a  long  argument  in  which  I 
attempt  to  prove  to  Case  63  that  one  defends,  not 
one's  self  but  the  nation.     When    in    difficulties 
she  repeats,  "One  must  defend  one's  self." 

1  The  notes  as  to  Case  51  have  not  an  absolute  bearing  upon 
logic  in  general,  but  the  reasons  put  forth  in  her  defense  by 
Case  51  are  indicative  of  a  certain  kind  of  logic  which  is  not 
masculine.  I  must  add  that  Case  51  is  a  woman  of  very  good 
education,  with  many  general  interests.  —  The  Author. 

II 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF   WOMAN 

She  refuses  to  face  the  fact  that  if  nobody  offered 
any  resistance,  nobody  would  be  killed ;  she  com- 
pletely confuses  the  defense  of  self  against  a  burglar 
with  that  of  a  nation  against  an  invader.  Finally 
she  assumes  that  the  defense  of  one's  country  is 
legitimate,  and  yet  insists  on  maintaining  with  the 
Bible  that  one  may  not  kill ! 

Case  33 

Case  33 :  "Why  didn't  America  interfere  with 
regard  to  German  atrocities  in  Belgium  ?" 

I:  "Why  should  she?" 

Case  2>?> :  "America  did  protest  when  her  trade 
was  menaced." 

I:  "Yes.  America  wanted  to  protect  her  in- 
terests, but  does  it  follow  that  she  should  protest 
against  atrocities  which  do  not  menace  her  in- 
terests?" 

Case  33  :  "But  her  interests  are  menaced.  Look 
at  the  trade  complications ;  they've  all  come  out 
of  that." 

Case  33  has  confused  trade  interests  with  moral 
duty ;  she  has  confused  two  issues :  atrocities 
against  neutrals  and  destruction  of  American 
property.  When  I  tell  her  this,  she  states  that 
there  is  a  connection :    that  if  America  had  pro- 

12 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF   WOMAN 

tested  against  atrocities,  the  war  would  have 
proceeded  on  better  lines  because  the  Germans 
would  have  been  frightened. 

I:  "How  would  this  have  affected  the  trade 
question  ?" 

Case  33  does  not  explain  but  draws  me  into  a 
morass  of  morsl  indignation  because  America  pro- 
tested against  trade  interference  and  not  against 
atrocities.  She  finally  says  America  had  no  right 
to  do  the  one  without  the  other,  which  logically 
is  chaos.  She  also  demands  to  be  told  what  was 
the  use  of  America's  signing  the  Geneva  Conven- 
tion and  the  Hague  Convention.  She  ignores  the 
fact  that  these  conventions  do  not  bind  anybody 
to  fight  in  their  defense  but  merely  to  observe 
their  provisions.  I  would  add  that  Case  ^3  is  a 
well-educated  woman,  independent  in  views,  and 
with  a  bias  toward  social  questions. 

Naturally,  where  there  is  a  question  of  love, 
feminine  logic  reaches  the  zenith  of  topsy-turvy- 
dom.  Here  is  a  dialogue  which  took  place  in 
my  presence. 

Case  8 

Case  8,  who  was  about  to  be  married,  attacked 
a  man  who  had  had  a  pronounced  flirtation  with 

13 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF   WOMAN 

her  because  he  suddenly  announced  that  he  was 
engaged. 

Case  8  :  "How  can  you  be  so  mean?" 

The  man:  "But  I  don't  understand.  You're 
going  to  be  married.  What  objection  can  you 
have  to  my  getting  engaged?" 

Case  8:  "It's  quite  different."  Nothing  could 
move  Case  8  from  that  point  of  view.1 

I  do  not  contend  that  bad  logic  is  the  monopoly 
of  woman,  for  man  is  also  disposed  to  believe  what 
he  chooses  in  matters  such  as  politics,  wars,  and 
so  forth,  and  then  to  try  to  prove  it.  Englishmen 
as  well  as  Englishwomen  find  victory  in  the  cap- 
ture of  a  German  trench,  insignificance  in  the  loss 
of  a  British  trench;  man,  as  well  as  woman,  is 
quite  capable  of  saying  that  it  always  rains  when 
the  Republicans  are  in  power,  should  he  happen 
to  be  a  Democrat ;  man  also  is  capable  of  tracing 
to  a  dinner  with  twelve  guests  the  breaking  of  a 
leg,  while  forgetting  the  scores  of  occasions  on 
which  he  dined  in  a  restaurant  with  twelve  other 
people  and  suffered  no  harm.  Man  is  capable  of 
every   unreasonable   deduction,    but   he   is   more 

1  Probably  owing  to  woman's  having  for  centuries  been  taught 
to  regard  the  vain  aspirations  of  the  male  as  her  perquisites.  — 
The  Author. 

14 


THE   INTELLIGENCE  OF  WOMAN 

inclined  to  justify  himself  by  close  reasoning.  In 
matters  of  argument,  man  is  like  the  Italian 
brigand  who  robs  the  friar,  then  confesses  and 
asks  him  for  absolution ;  woman  is  the  burglar 
unrepentant.  This  may  be  due  to  woman  as  a 
rule  having  few  guiding  principles  or  intellectual 
criteria.  She  often  holds  so  many  moral  prin- 
ciples that  intellectual  argument  with  her  irritates 
the  crisper  male  mind.  But  she  finds  it  difficult 
to  retain  a  grasp  upon  a  central  idea,  to  clear  away 
the  side  issues  which  obscure  it.  She  can  seldom 
carry  an  idea  to  its  logical  conclusion,  passing 
from  term  to  term ;  somewhere  there  is  a  solution 
of  continuity.  For  this  reason  arguments  with 
women,  which  have  begun  with  the  latest  musical 
play,  easily  pass  on,  from  its  alleged  artistic  merit, 
to  its  costumes,  their  scantiness,  their  undesirable 
scantiness,  the  need  for  inspection,  inspectors  of 
theaters,  and,  little  by  little,  other  inspectors, 
until  one  gets  to  mining  inspectors  and  possibly 
to  mining  in  general.  The  reader  will  observe 
that  these  ideas  are  fairly  well  linked.  All  that 
happens  is  that  the  woman,  tiring  of  the  central 
argument,  has  pursued  each  side  issue  as  it  offered 
itself.  This  comes  from  a  lack  of  concentration 
which  indisposes   a  woman   to  penetrate  deeply 

15 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF   WOMAN 

into  a  subject ;  she  is  not  used  to  concentration, 
she  does  not  like  it.  It  might  lead  her  to  dis- 
agreeable discoveries. 

It  is  for  this  reason  —  because  she  needs  to 
defend  purely  emotional  positions  against  man, 
who  uses  intellectual  weapons  —  that  woman  is 
so  much  more  easily  than  man  attracted  by  new 
religions  and  new  philosophies  —  by  Christian 
Science,  by  Higher  Thought,  by  Theosophy,  by 
Eucken,  by  Bergson.  Those  religions  are  no 
longer  spiritual;  they  have  an  intellectual  basis; 
they  are  not  ideal  religions  like  Christianity  and 
Mohammedanism  and  the  like,  which  frankly 
ask  you  to  make  an  act  of  faith ;  what  they  do  is 
to  attempt  to  seduce  the  alleged  soul  through 
the  intellect.  That  is  exactly  what  the  aspiring 
woman  demands :  emotional  satisfaction  and  in- 
tellectual concession.  Particularly  in  America, 
one  discovers  her  intellectual  fog  in  the  continual 
use  of  such  words  as  mental,  elemental,  cosmic, 
universality,  social  harmony,  essential  cosmos,  and 
other  similar  ornaments  of  the  modern  logomachy. 

Case  1 6 

Case  16  told  me  that  my  mind  did  not  "func- 
tionalize"  properly.     And  gave  me  as  an  authority 

l6 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF  WOMAN 

for  the  statement  Aristotle,  before  whom,  of  course, 
I  bow. 

A  singular  and  suggestive  fact  is  that  woman 
generally  displays  pitiless  logic  when  she  is  dealing 
with  things  that  she  knows  well.  An  expert 
housekeeper  is  the  type,  and  there  are  no  lapses 
in  her  argument  with  a  tradesman.  It  is  a  plati- 
tude to  mention  the  business  capacity  of  the 
Frenchwoman,  and  many  women  are  expert  in 
the  investment  of  money,  in  the  administration 
of  detail,  in  hospital  management,  in  the  rotation 
of  servants'  holidays  (which,  in  large  households, 
is  most  complex).  It  would  appear  that  woman 
is  unconcentrated  and  inconsequent  only  where 
she  has  not  been  properly  educated,  and  this  has 
a  profound  bearing  on  her  future  development. 
There  is  a  growing  class,  of  which  Mrs.  Fawcett, 
Mrs.  Havelock  Ellis,  the  Countess  of  Warwick, 
Miss  Jane  Addams,  are  typical,  who  have  bent 
their  minds  upon  intellectual  problems ;  women 
like  Miss  Emma  Goldman;  like  Miss  Mary  Mc- 
Arthur,  whose  grasp  of  industrial  questions  is  as 
good  as  any  man's.  They  differ  profoundly  from 
the  average  feminine  literary  artist,  who  is  almost 
invariably  unable  to  write  of  anything  except  love. 
I  can  think  of  only  one  modern  exception,  —  Miss 

i7 


THE    INTELLIGENCE   OF   WOMAN 

Amber  Reeves ;  among  her  seniors,  Mrs.  Humphry 
Ward  is  the  most  notable  exception,  but  not  quite 
notable  enough. 

This  tendency  is,  I  believe,  entirely  due  to 
woman  having  always  been  divorced  from  business 
and  politics,  to  her  having  been  until  recently 
encouraged  to  delight  in  small  material  posses- 
sions, while  discouraged  from  focusing  on  anything 
non-material  except  religion,  and  from  considering 
general  ideas.  Particularly  as  regards  general 
ideas  woman  has  lived  in  a  bad  atmosphere.  The 
French  king  who  said  to  his  queen,  "  Madam,  we 
have  taken  you  to  give  us  children  and  not  to 
give  us  advice, "  was  blowing  a  chill  breath  upon 
the  tender  shoot  of  woman's  intelligence.  Neither 
he  nor  other  men  wished  women  to  conceive  gen- 
eral ideas :  women  became  incapable  of  conceiving 
or  understanding  them.  Thence  sprang  generali- 
zation, the  tendency  in  woman  to  make  sweeping 
statements,  such  as  "AH  men  are  deceivers,"  or 
"Men  can  do  what  they  like  in  the  world," 
or  "  Men  cannot  feel  as  women  do."  It  is 
not  that  they  dislike  general  questions,  but 
that  they  have  been  thrust  back  from  general 
questions,  so  that  they  cannot  hold  them.  Here 
is  a  case : 

18 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF   WOMAN 

Case  2 

With  the  object  of  entertaining  an  elderly  lady, 
who  is  an  invalid,  I  explain,  in  response  to  her  own 
request,  the  case  that  Germany  makes  for  having 
declared  war.  She  asks  one  or  two  questions,  and 
then  suddenly  interrupts  me  to  ask  what  I  have 
been  doing  with  myself  lately  in  the  evenings. 

This  is  a  case  of  interest  in  the  particular  as 
opposed  to  the  general.  It  is  an  instance  of  what 
I  want  to  show,  —  that  woman  drifts  toward  the 
particular  because  she  has  been  driven  away  from 
the  general.  To  concentrate  too  long  upon  the 
general  is  to  her  merely  fatiguing.  Doubtless 
because  of  this,  many  middle-aged  women  become 
exceedingly  dull  to  men.  So  long  as  they  are 
young  all  is  well,  for  few  men  care  what  folly  issues 
from  rosy  lips.  But  once  the  lips  are  no  longer 
rosy,  then  man  fails  to  find  the  companion  he 
needs,  because  companionship,  as  differentiated 
from  love,  can  rest  only  on  mental  sympathy. 
Middle-aged  man  is  often  dull  too;  while  the 
middle-aged  woman  may  concern  herself  over- 
much with  the  indigestion  of  her  pet  dog,  the 
middle-aged  man  is  often  unduly  moved  by  his 
own  indigestion.     But,  broadly  speaking,  a  greater 

i9 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF  WOMAN 

percentage  of  middle-aged  and  elderly  men  than 
of  such  women  are  interested  in  political  and 
philosophical  questions. 

These  men  are  often  dull  for  another  reason: 
they  are  more  conventional.  The  reader  may 
differ  from  me,  but  I  believe  that  woman  is  much 
less  conventional  than  man.  She  does  all  the  con- 
ventional things  and  attacks  other  women  savagely 
for  breaches  of  convention.  But  you  will  gener- 
ally find  that  where  a  man  may  with  impunity 
break  a  convention  he  will  not  do  so,  while,  if 
secrecy  is  guaranteed,  a  woman  will  please  herself 
first  and  repent  only  if  necessary.  It  follows  that 
a  man  is  conventional  because  he  respects  con- 
vention; woman  conventional  because  she  is 
afraid  of  what  may  happen  if  she  does  not  obey 
convention.  I  submit  that  this  shows  a  greater 
degree  of  conventionality  in  man.  The  typical 
Englishman  of  the  world,  wrecked  on  a  desert 
island,  would  get  into  his  evening  clothes  as  long 
as  his  shirts  lasted ;  I  do  not  think  his  wife,  alone 
in  such  circumstances,  would  wear  a  low-cut  dress 
to  take  her  meal  of  cocoanuts,  even  if  her  frock 
did  up  in  front. 

It  is  this  unconventionality  that  precipitates 
woman  into  the  so-called  new  movements  in  art 

20 


THE   INTELLIGENCE  OF  WOMAN 

or  philosophy.  She  reacts  against  what  is,  seeking 
a  new  freedom ;  even  if  she  is  only  seeking  a  new 
excitement,  a  new  color,  a  new  god,  unconsciously 
she  seeks  a  more  liberal  atmosphere,  while  man 
is  nearly  always  contented  with  the  atmosphere 
that  is.  When  he  rebels,  his  tendency  is  to  destroy 
the  old  sanctuary,  hers  to  build  a  new  sanctuary. 
That  is  a  form  of  idealism,  —  not  a  very  high 
idealism,  for  woman  seldom  strains  toward  the 
impossible.  In  literature  I  cannot  call  to  mind 
that  woman  has  ever  conceived  a  Utopia  such  as 
those  imagined  by  Bellamy,  Samuel  Butler,  Wil- 
liam Morris,  and  H.  G.  Wells.  The  only  woman 
who  voiced  ideas  of  this  kind  was  Mary  Woll- 
stonecraft,  and  her  views  were  hardly  Utopian. 
Nothings,  such  as  Utopias,  have  been  always  too 
airy  for  woman.  The  heroes  in  the  novels  she 
has  written,  until  recently  and  with  one  or  two 
exceptions,  —  such  as  some  of  the  heroes  of  George 
Eliot,  —  are  either  stagey  or  sweet.  Mr.  Roches- 
ter is  stagey,  Grandcourt  is  stagey,  while  the  hero 
of  "Under  Two  Flags"  is  merely  Turkish  Delight. 

3 
A    quality    which     singularly    contrasts    with 
woman's  vague  idealism  is  the  accuracy  she  displays 

21 


THE  INTELLIGENCE   OF   WOMAN 

in  business.  This  is  due  to  her  being  fundamentally 
inaccurate.  It  is  not  the  accurate  people  who  are 
always  accurate ;  it  is  the  inaccurate  people  on 
their  guard.1  Woman's  interest  in  the  particular 
predisposes  her  to  the  exact,  for  accuracy  may  be 
denned  as  a  continuous  interest  in  the  particular. 
I  suspect  that  it  indicates  a  probability  that  by 
education,  and  especially  encouragement,  woman 
may  develop  a  far  higher  degree  of  concentration 
than  she  has  hitherto  done.  In  her  way  stands  a 
fatal  facility,  that  of  grasping  ideas  before  they  are 
half -expressed.  It  is  a  quality  of  imagination, 
natural  rather  than  induced.  Any  schoolteacher 
will  confirm  the  statement  that  in  a  mixed  class, 
aged  eleven  to  twelve,  the  essays  of  the  girls  are 
better  than  those  of  the  boys.  This  is  not  so  in  a 
mixed  university.  I  suspect  that  this  latter  is 
quite  as  much  due  to  the  academic  judgment, 
which  does  not  recognize  imagination,  as  to  the 
fact  that  in  the  later  years  of  their  lives  the  energies 
of  girls  are  diverted  from  intellectual  concentra- 
tion (and  also  expression)  toward  the  artistic  and 
the  social.     This  untrained  concentration  produces 

1 1  have  observed  for  two  years  the  steady  growth  in  the  ac- 
curacy of  the  work  of  Case  33,  due  to  her  having  concentrated 
upon  her  instinctive  inaccuracy.  —  The  Author. 

22 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF  WOMAN 

a  certain  superficiality  and  an  impetuousness  which 
harmonize  with  the  intrusion  of  side  issues,  —  to 
which  I  have  referred,  —  and  with  the  burgeoning 
of  side  issues  on  the  general  idea. 

Nowhere  is  this  better  shown  than  in  the  post- 
script habit.  Men  do  not,  as  a  rule,  use  postscripts, 
and  it  is  significant  that  artists  and  persons  in- 
clined toward  the  arts  are  much  more  given  to 
postscripts  than  other  kinds  of  men.  One  might 
almost  say  that  women  correspond  by  postscript ; 
some  of  them  put  the  subject  of  the  letter  in  the 
postscript,  as  the  scorpion  keeps  his  poison  in  his 
tail.  I  have  before  me  letters  from  Case  58,  with 
two  postscripts,  and  one  extraordinary  letter  from 
Case  11,  with  four  postscripts  and  a  sentence 
written  outside  the  envelope.  This  is  the  apogee 
of  superficiality.  The  writers  have  run  on,  se- 
duced by  irrelevance,  and  have  not  been  able  to 
stop  to  consider  in  all  its  bearings  the  subject  of 
the  letter.  Each  postscript  represents  a  develop- 
ment or  qualification,  which  must  indicate  the 
waste  by  bad  education  of  what  may  be  a  very 
good  mind. 

I  would  say  in  passing  that  we  should  not  attach 
undue  importance  to  woman's  physical  disabilities. 
It  is  true  that  woman  is  more  conscious  of  her  body 

23 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF  WOMAN 

than  is  man.  So  long  as  he  is  fed,  sufficiently  busy, 
in  good  general  health,  he  is  normal.  But  woman 
is  far  more  often  in  an  unbalanced  physical  con- 
dition. There  is  a  great  deal  to  be  said  for  the 
Hindu  philosophical  point  of  view,  that  the  body 
needs  to  be  just  so  satisfied  as  to  become  imper- 
ceptible to  the  consciousness,  as  opposed  to  the 
point  of  view  of  the  Christian  ascetics,  who  un- 
fortunately carried  their  ideas  so  far  that  they 
ended  by  thinking  more  of  their  hair  shirt  than  of 
Him  for  whose  sake  they  wore  it.  In  this  sense 
woman  is  intellectually  handicapped  because  her 
body  obtrudes  itself  upon  her.  It  is  a  subject  of 
brooding  and  agitation.  I  suspect  that  this  is 
largely  remediable,  for  I  am  not  convinced  that 
it  is  woman's  peculiar  physical  conditions  that 
occasionally  warp  her  intellect;  it  is  equally 
possible  that  a  warped  intellect  produces  unsatis- 
factory physical  conditions.  Therefore,  if,  as  I 
firmly  believe  that  we  can,  we  develop  this  in- 
tellect, profound  changes  may  with  time  appear 
in  these  physical  conditions. 

4 
The  further  qualification  of  woman's  intellect  is 
in  her  moral  attitude.     I  would  ask  the  reader  to 

24 


THE  INTELLIGENCE   OF  WOMAN 

divest  himself  of  the  idea  that  " moral"  refers 
only  to  matters  of  sex.  Morality  is  the  rule  of 
conduct  of  each  human  being  in  his  relations  with 
other  human  beings,  and  this  covers  all  relations. 
Because  in  some  senses  the  morality  of  woman 
is  not  the  morality  of  man,  we  are  not  entitled  to 
say  with  Pope  that 

"Woman's  at  best  a  contradiction  still." 

She  is  a  contradiction.  Man  is  a  contradiction, 
apparently  of  a  different  kind,  and  that  is  all. 
Thence  spring  misunderstandings  and  sometimes 
dislike,  as  between  people  of  different  nations.  I 
do  not  want  to  labor  the  point,  but  I  would  sug- 
gest that  in  a  very  minor  degree  the  apparent 
difference  between  man  and  woman  may  be  paral- 
leled by  the  apparent  difference  between  the 
Italian  and  the  Swede,  who,  within  two  genera- 
tions, produce  very  similar  American  children. 
But  man,  who  generalizes  quite  as  wildly  as 
woman  when  he  does  not  understand,  is  deter- 
mined to  emphasize  the  difference  in  every  re- 
lation of  life.  For  instance,  it  is  commonly  said 
that  woman  cannot  keep  her  promise.  This 
seems  to  me  entirely  untrue ;  given  that  as  a  rule 
woman's  intellect  is  not  sufficiently  educated  to 

25 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF  WOMAN 

enable  her  to  find  a  good  reason  for  breaking  her 
promise,  it  is  much  more  difficult  for  her  to  do  so. 
For  we  are  all  moral  creatures,  and  if  a  man  must 
steal  the  crown  jewels,  he  is  happier  if  he  can  dis- 
cover a  high  motive  for  so  doing.  Man  has  a 
definite  advantage  where  a  loophole  has  to  be 
found,  and  I  have  known  few  women  capable  of 
standing  up  in  argument  against  a  trained  lawyer 
who  has  acquired  the  usual  dexterity  in  misrepre- 
sentation. 

In  love  and  marriage,  particularly,  woman  will 
keep  plighted  troth  more  closely  than  man ;  there 
is  no  male  equivalent  of  jilt,  but  the  male  does 
jilt  on  peculiar  fines ;  while  a  woman  who  knows 
that  her  youth,  her  beauty  are  going  must  bring 
things  to  a  head  by  jilting,  the  male  is  never  in  a 
hurry,  for  his  attractions  wane  so  very  slowly. 
Why  should  he  jilt  the  woman,  —  make  a  stir  ? 
So  he  just  goes  on.  In  due  course  she  tires  and 
releases  him,  when  he  goes  to  another  woman. 
That  is  jilting  by  inches,  and  as  regards  faithful- 
ness a  pledged  woman  is  more  difficult  to  win 
away  than  a  pledged  man.  (To  be  just,  it  should 
be  said  that  unfaithfulness  is  in  the  eyes  of  most 
men  a  small  matter,  in  the  eyes  of  most  women  a 
serious  matter.)     A  pledged  woman  will  remain 

26 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF  WOMAN 

faithful  long  after  love  has  flown ;  the  promise  is  a 
mystic  bond;  none  but  a  tall  flame  can  hide  the 
ashes  of  the  dead  love.  And  so,  when  Shake- 
speare asserts,  — 

"  Frailty,  thy  name  is  woman," 

he  is  delivering  one  of  the  hasty  judgments  that 
abound  in  his  solemn  romanticism. 

This  applies  in  realms  divorced  from  love,  —  in 
questions  of  money,  such  as  debts  or  bets. 
Women  do  run  up  milliners'  bills,  but  men  boast  of 
never  paying  their  tailors.  And  if  sometimes 
women  do  not  discharge  the  lost  bet,  it  is  largely 
because  a  tradition  of  protection  and  patronage 
has  laid  down  that  women  need  not  pay  their 
bets.  Besides,  women  usually  pay  their  losses, 
while  several  men  have  not  yet  discharged  their 
debts  of  honor  to  me.  It  is  a  matter  of  honesty, 
and  I  think  the  criminal  returns  for  the  United 
States  would  produce  the  same  evidence  as  those 
for  England  and  Wales.  In  191 3  there  were  tried 
at  Assizes  for  offences  against  property  16 16  men 
and  122  women.  The  records  of  Quarter  Sessions 
and  of  the  courts  of  Summary  Jurisdiction  yield 
the  same  result,  an  enormous  majority  of  male 
offenders,  —  though  there  be  more  women  than 

27 


THE   INTELLIGENCE  OF  WOMAN 

men  in  England  and  Wales !  And  yet,  in  the  face 
of  such  official  figures,  of  the  evidence  of  every 
employer,  man  cherishes  a  belief  in  woman's 
dishonesty !  One  reason,  no  doubt,  is  that 
woman's  emotional  nature  leads  her,  when  she  is 
criminal,  to  criminality  of  an  aggravated  kind. 
She  then  justifies  Pope's  misogynist  lines : 

"  O  woman,  woman!     When  to  ill  thy  mind 
Is  bent,  all  hell  contains  no  fouler  fiend." 

Most  men,  however,  have  abandoned  the  case 
against  woman's  dishonesty  and  confine  them- 
selves to  describing  her  as  a  liar,  forgetting  that 
they  generally  dislike  the  truth  when  it  comes  from 
a  woman's  lips,  and  always  when  it  reflects  upon 
their  own  conduct.  For  centuries  man  has  asked 
that  woman  should  flatter,  but  also  that  she  should 
tell  the  truth :  such  a  confusion  of  demands  leads 
the  impartial  mind  to  the  conclusion  that  vanity 
cannot  be  a  monopoly  of  the  female.  But  it  is 
quite  true  that  woman  does  not  always  cherish 
truth  so  well  as  man.  The  desire  for  truth  is 
intellectual,  not  emotional.  Truth  is  a  cold  bed- 
fellow, as  might  be  expected  of  one  who  rose  from 
a  well.  And  among  women  cases  of  disinterested 
lying  are  not  uncommon.     Here  is  Case  16 : 

28 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF   WOMAN 

An  elderly  woman  talked  at  length  about  not 
having  received  insurance  papers,  and  made  a 
great  disturbance.  It  later  appeared  that  she  had 
not  insured.  On  another  occasion  she  informed 
the  household  that  her  son-in-law  had  been  cabled 
to  from  South  Africa  to  come  and  visit  his  dying 
mother.     It  was  proved  that  no  cable  had  been  sent. 

I  have  a  number  of  cases  of  this  kind,  but  this 
is  the  most  curious.  I  suspect  that  this  sort  of 
lying  is  traceable  to  a  need  for  romance  and  drama 
in  a  colorless  life.  It  springs  from  the  wish  to 
create  a  romantic  atmosphere  round  one's  self  and 
to  increase  one's  personal  importance.  Because 
men  hold  out  hands  less  greedy  toward  drama  and 
romance  they  are  less  afflicted,  but  they  do  not 
entirely  escape,  and  we  have  all  observed  the 
new  importance  of  the  man  whose  brother  has 
been  photographed  in  a  newspaper  or,  better  still, 
killed  in  a  railway  accident.  If  he  has  been  burned 
in  a  theater,  the  grief  of  his  male  relatives  is  subtly 
tinged  with  excited  delight.  Romance,  the  wage 
of  lies,  is  woman's  compensation  for  a  dull  life. 

5 
Vanity  is  as  old  as  the  mammoth.     Romantic 
lying,  obviously  connected  with  vanity,  is  justly 

29 


THE  INTELLIGENCE  OF  WOMAN 

alleged  to  be  developed  in  woman.  No  doubt 
woman's  chief  desire  has  been  to  appear  beautiful, 
and  it  is  quite  open  to  question  whether  the  leaves 
that  clothed  our  earliest  ancestress  were  gathered 
in  a  spirit  of  modesty  rather  than  in  response  to  a 
desire  for  adornment. 

But  it  should  not  be  too  readily  assumed  that 
vanity  is  purely  a  feminine  characteristic.  It  is  a 
human  characteristic,  and  the  favor  of  any  male 
savage  can  be  bought  at  the  price  of  a  necklace  of 
beads  or  of  an  admiral's  cocked  hat.  The  modern 
man  is  modish  too,  as  much  as  he  dares.  At  New- 
port as  at  Brighton  the  dandy  is  supreme.  It 
would  be  inaccurate,  however,  to  limit  vanity  to 
clothes.  Vanity  is  more  subtle,  and  I  would  ask 
the  reader  which  of  the  three  principal  motives 
that  animate  man  —  love,  ambition,  and  gold 
lust  —  is  the  strongest.  The  desire  to  shine  in 
the  eyes  of  one's  fellows  has  produced  much  in 
art  and  political  service;  it  has  produced  much 
that  is  foolish  and  ignoble.  It  has  led  to  political 
competition,  to  a  wild  race  for  ill-remunerated 
offices,  governorships,  memberships  of  Parliament. 
Representatives  of  the  people  often  wish  to  serve 
the  people;  they  also  like  to  be  marked  out  as 
the  people's  men.     There  are  no  limits  to  masculine 

30 


THE  INTELLIGENCE   OF  WOMAN 

desire  for  honors ;  seldom  in  England  does  a  man 
refuse  a  peerage ;  Frenchmen  are  martyrs  to  their 
love  of  ribbons,  and  not  a  year  passes  without  a 
scandal  because  an  official  has  been  bribed  to 
obtain  the  Legion  d'Honneur  for  somebody,  or, 
funnier  still,  because  an  adventurer  has  blacked 
his  face,  set  up  in  a  small  flat,  impersonated  a 
negro  potentate,  and  distributed  for  value  re- 
ceived grand  crosses  of  fantastic  kingdoms.  Even 
democratic  Americans  have  been  known  to  seek 
titled  husbands  for  their  daughters,  and  a  few 
have  become  Papal  barons  or  counts. 

Male  vanity  differs  from  female,  but  both  are 
vanity.  The  two  sexes  even  share  that  curious 
form  of  vanity  which  in  man  consists  in  his  calling 
himself  a  " plain  man",  bragging  of  having  come 
to  New  York  without  shoes  and  with  a  dime  in 
his  pocket ;  which,  in  woman,  consists  in  neglect- 
ing her  appearance.  Both  sexes  convey  more  or 
less:  "I  am  what  I  am,  a  humble  person  .  .  . 
but  quite  good  enough."  The  arrogance  of 
humility  is  simply  repulsive. 

Ideas  such  as  the  foregoing  may  proceed  from 
a  certain  simplicity.  Woman  is  much  less  com- 
plex than  the  poets  believe.  For  instance,  many 
men  hold  that  woman's  lack  of  self-consciousness, 

3i 


THE   INTELLIGENCE  OF  WOMAN 

as  exemplified  by  disturbances  in  shops,  has  its 
roots  in  some  intricate  reasoning  process.  One 
must  not  be  carried  away  :  the  truth  is  that  woman, 
having  so  long  been  dependent  upon  man,  has  an 
exaggerated  idea  of  the  importance  of  small  sums. 
Man  has  earned  money;  woman  has  been  taught 
only  to  save  it.  Thus  she  has  been  poor,  and 
poverty  has  caused  her  to  shrink  from  expendi- 
ture ;  often  she  has  become  mean  and,  paradoxically 
enough,  she  has  at  the  same  time  become  extrava- 
gant. Poverty  has  taught  her  to  respect  the 
penny,  while  it  has  taught  her  nothing  about  the 
pound.  If  woman  finds  it  quite  easy  to  spend 
one  tenth  of  the  household  income  on  dress,  and 
even  more,1  it  is  because  her  education  makes  it 
as  difficult  for  her  to  conceive  a  thousand  dollars 
as  it  is  for  a  man  to  conceive  a  million.  It  is 
merely  a  question  of  familiarity  with  money. 

Besides,  foolish  economy  and  reckless  expendi- 
ture are  indications  of  an  elementary  quality.  In 
that  sense  woman  is  still  something  of  a  savage. 
She  is  still  less  civilized  than  man,  largely  because 
she  has  not  been  educated.  This  may  be  a  very 
good  thing,  and  it  certainly  is  an  agreeable  one 

1  See  "Uniforms  for  Women,"  and  observe  extreme  figures 
and  details  of  feminine  expenditure  on  clothes. 

32 


THE  INTELLIGENCE   OF  WOMAN 

from  the  masculine  point  of  view.  Whether  we 
consider  woman's  attitude  to  the  law,  to  social 
service,  or  to  war,  it  is  the  same  thing.  In  most 
cases  she  is  lawless ;  she  will  obey  the  law  because 
she  is  afraid  of  it,  but  she  will  not  respect  it.  For 
her  it  is  always  sic  volo,  sic  jubeo.  I  suspect  that 
if  she  had  had  a  share  in  making  the  law  she 
would  not  have  been  like  this,  for  she  would  have 
become  aware  of  the  relation  between  law  and 
life.  Roughly  she  tends  to  look  upon  the  law  as 
tyrannous  if  she  does  not  like  it,  as  protective  if 
she  does  like  it.  Probably  there  is  little  relation 
between  her  own  moral  impulse,  which  is  gener- 
ous, and  the  law,  which  is  only  just.  (That  is, 
just  in  intention.)  This  is  qualified  by  the  moral 
spirit  in  woman,  which  increasingly  leads  her  to 
the  view  that  certain  things  should  be  done  and 
others  not  be  done.  But  even  then  it  is  likely 
that  at  heart  woman  does  not  respect  the  law; 
she  may  respect  what  it  represents,  —  strength,  — 
but  not  what  it  implies,  —  equity.  She  is  in- 
finitely more  rebellious  than  man,  and  where  she 
has  power  she  inflames  the  world  in  protest.  I 
do  not  refer  to  the  militant  suffragists,  but  to 
woman's  general  attitude.  For  instance,  when  it 
is  proposed  to  compel  women  to  insure  their  serv- 

33 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF  WOMAN 

ants,  to  pay  employer's  compensation  for  acci- 
dent, to  restrict  married  women's  control  of  their 
property,  to  establish  laws  regulating  the  social 
evil,  we  find  female  opposition  very  violent.  I  do 
not  mean  material  opposition,  although  that  does 
occur,  but  mental  hostility.  Woman  surrenders 
because  she  must,  man  because  he  ought  to. 

That  is  an  attitude  of  barbarism.  It  is  a  chang- 
ing attitude;  the  ranks  of  social  service  have, 
during  the  last  half-century,  been  disproportion- 
ately swollen  by  woman.  Our  most  active  worker 
in  the  causes  of  factory  inspection,  child  protection, 
anti-sweating,  is  to-day  woman.  Woman  is  emerg- 
ing swiftly  from  the  barbarous  state  in  which  she 
was  long  maintained.  She  will  change  yet  more, 
—  and  further  on  in  this  chapter  I  will  attempt  to 
show  how,  —  but  to-day  it  must  be  granted  that 
there  runs  in  her  veins  much  vigorous  barbarian 
blood.  Her  attitude  to  war  is  significant.  During 
the  past  months  I  have  met  many  women  who  were 
inflamed  by  the  idea  of  blood ;  so  long  as  they 
were  not  losing  relatives  or  friends  themselves, 
they  tended  to  look  upon  the  war  as  the  most  ex- 
citing serial  they  had  ever  read.  Heat  and  hero- 
ism, what  could  be  more  romantic  ?  Every  woman 
to  whom  I  told  this  said  it  was  untrue,  but  in  no 

34 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF  WOMAN 

country  have  the  women's  unions  struck  against 
war;  the  suffragettes  have  organized,  not  only 
hospitals,  but  kitchens,  recreation  rooms,  canteens 
for  the  use  of  soldiers ;  many  have  clamored  to  be 
allowed  to  make  shells ;  some,  especially  in  Russia, 
have  carried  rifles.  In  England,  thirteen  thousand 
women  volunteered  to  make  war  material ;  women 
filled  the  German  factories.  Of  course,  I  recog- 
nize that  this  is  partly  economic :  women  must 
live  in  wartime  even  at  the  price  of  men's  lives, 
and  I  am  aware  that  a  great  many  women  have 
done  all  they  could  to  arrest  the  spread  of  war. 
In  England  many  have  prevented  their  men  from 
volunteering;  in  America,  I  am  told,  women 
have  been  solid  against  war  with  Germany.  But 
let  the  reader  not  be  deceived.  A  subtle  point 
arises  which  is  often  ignored.  If  women  went  to 
war  instead  of  men,  their  attitude  might  be  differ- 
ent. Consider,  indeed,  these  two  paragraphs, 
fictitious  descriptions  of  a  battlefield :  — 

"Before  the  trenches  lay  heaped  hundreds  of 
young  men,  with  torn  bodies,  their  faces  pale  in 
the  moonlight.  The  rays  lit  up  the  face  of  one 
that  lay  near,  made  a  glitter  upon  his  little  golden 
moustache." 

"Before  the  trenches  lay  heaped  hundreds  of 
35 


THE  INTELLIGENCE  OF  WOMAN 

young  girls.  The  moonlight  streamed  upon  their 
torn  bodies  and  their  fair  skins.  The  rays  fell 
upon  one  that  lay  near,  drawing  a  glow  from  the 
masses  of  her  golden  hair." 

Let  the  masculine  reader  honestly  read  these 
two  paragraphs  (which  I  do  not  put  forward  as 
literature).  The  first  will  pain  him;  the  second 
will  hurt  him  more.  That  men  should  be  slaugh- 
tered —  how  hateful !  That  girls  should  be  slaugh- 
tered —  it  is  unbearable.  Here,  I  submit,  is  part 
of  woman's  opposition  to  war,  of  the  exaggerated 
idea  people  have  of  her  humanitarian  attitude.  I 
will  not  press  the  point  that  as  a  savage  she  may 
like  blood  better  than  man ;  I  will  confine  myself 
to  suggesting  that  a  large  portion  of  her  opposi- 
tion to  war  comes  out  of  a  sexual  consciousness; 
it  seems  horrible  to  her  that  young  men  should  be 
killed,  just  as  horrible  as  my  paragraph  on  the 
dead  girls  may  seem  to  the  male  reader. 

Some  men  have  seen  women  as  barbarous  and 
dangerous  only,  have  based  their  attitude  upon  the 
words  of  Thomas  Otway:  "She  betrayed  the 
Capitol,  lost  Mark  Antony  to  the  world,  laid  old 
Troy  in  ashes.".  This  is  absurd;  if  man  cannot 
resist  the  temptation  of  woman,  he  can  surely 
claim  no  greater  nobility.     Mark  Antony  "lost" 

36 


THE   INTELLIGENCE  OF  WOMAN 

Cleopatra  by  wretched  suicide  as  much  as  she 
"lost"  him.  If  because  of  Helen  old  Troy  was 
laid  in  ashes,  at  least  another  woman,  guiltless 
Andromache,  paid  the  price.  To  represent  woman 
so,  to  suggest  that  there  were  only  two  people 
in  Eden,  Adam  and  the  Serpent,  is  as  ridiculous 
as  making  a  woman  into  a  goddess.  It  is  the 
hope  of  the  future  that  woman  shall  be  realized  as 
neither  diabolical  nor  divine,  but  as  merely  human. 

6 

We  must  recognize  that  the  emotional  quality 
in  woman  is  not  a  characteristic  of  sex;  it  is 
merely  the  exaggeration  of  a  human  characteristic. 
For  instance,  it  is  currently  said  that  women 
make  trouble  on  committees.  They  do ;  I  have 
sat  with  women  on  committees  and  will  do  it 
again  as  seldom  as  possible :  their  frequent  in- 
ability to  understand  an  obvious  syllogism,  their 
passion  for  side  issues,  their  generalizations,  and 
their  particularism  whenever  emotion  is  aroused, 
make  committee  work  very  difficult .  But  every 
committee  has  its  male  member  who  cannot  escape 
from  his  egotism  or  from  his  own  conversation. 
What  woman  does  man  does,  only  he  does  it  less. 
The  difference  is  one  of  degree,  not  of  quality. 

37 


THE  INTELLIGENCE  OF  WOMAN 

Where  the  emotionalism  of  women  grows  more 
pronounced  is  in  matters  of  religion  and  love. 
There  is  a  vague  correspondence  between  her 
attitude  to  the  one  and  to  the  other,  in  outwardly 
Christian  countries,  I  mean.  She  often  finds  in 
religion  a  curious  philter,  both  a  sedative  and  a 
stimulant.  Religion  is  often  for  women  an  allo- 
trope  of  romance;  blind  as  an  earthworm  she 
seeks  the  stars,  and  it  is  curious  that  religion 
should  make  so  powerful  an  appeal  to  woman, 
considering  how  she  has  been  treated  by  the  faiths. 
The  Moslem  faith  has  made  of  her  a  toy  and  a 
reward ;  the  Jewish,  a  submissive  beast  of  burden ; 
the  Christian,  a  danger,  a  vessel  of  impurity.  I 
mean  the  actual  faiths,  not  their  original  theory; 
one  must  take  a  faith  as  one  finds  it,  not  as  it  is 
supposed  to  be,  and  in  the  case  of  woman  the 
Christian  religion  is  but  little  in  accord  with  the 
view  of  Him  who  forgave  the  woman  taken  in 
adultery.  The  Christian  religion  has  done  every- 
thing it  could  to  heap  ignominy  upon  woman: 
head-coverings  in  church,  practical  tolerance  of 
male  infidelity,  kingly  repudiation  of  queens,  com- 
pulsory child-bearing,  and  a  multiplicity  of  other 
injustices.  The  Proverbs  and  the  Bible  in  general 
are  filled  with  strictures  on  "a  brawling  woman", 

38 


THE  INTELLIGENCE  OF  WOMAN 

"a  contentious  woman";  when  man  is  referred 
to,  mankind  is  really  implied.  Yet  woman  has 
kissed  the  religious  rods.  One  might  think  that 
indeed  she  was  seduced  and  held  only  by  cruelty 
and  contempt.  She  is  now,  in  a  measure,  turning 
against  the  faiths,  but  still  she  clings  to  them  more 
closely  than  man  because  she  is  more  capable  of 
making  an  act  of  faith,  of  believing  that  which 
she  knows  to  be  impossible. 

The  appeal  of  religion  to  woman  is  the  appeal 
of  self-surrender,  —  that  is,  ostensibly.  In  the 
case  of  love  it  is  the  same  appeal,  ostensibly; 
though  I  suspect  that  intuition  has  told  many  a 
woman  who  gave  herself  to  a  lover  or  to  a  god  that 
she  was  absorbing  more  than  she  gave:  in  love 
using  the  man  for  nature  whom  she  represents,  in 
faith  performing  a  pantheistic  prodigy,  the  en- 
closing of  Nirvana  within  her  own  bosom. 

But  speculation  as  to  the  impulse  of  sex  in  relation 
to  religion,  in  Greece,  in  Egypt,  in  Latin  countries,, 
would  draw  me  too  far.  I  can  record  only  that  to 
all  appearances  a  portion  of  the  religious  instinct 
of  woman  is  derived  from  the  love  instinct,  which 
many  believe  to  be  woman's  first  and  only  motive. 
It  is  significant  that  among  the  sixty-five  cases 
upon  which  this  article  is  based  there  are  several 

39 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF  WOMAN 

deeply  religious  single  women,  while  not  one  of  the 
married  women  shows  signs  of  more  than  conven- 
tional devotion.  I  incline  to  believe  that  woman 
is  firstly  animal,  secondly,  intellectual ;  while  man 
appears  to  be  occasionally  animal  and  primarily 
intellectual. 

Observe  indeed  the  varying  age  at  which  paternal 
and  maternal  instincts  manifest  themselves.  A 
woman's  passion  for  her  child  generally  awakes  at 
birth,  and  there  are  many. cases  where  an  unfor- 
tunate girl,  intending  to  murder  her  child,  as  soon 
as  it  is  born  discovers  that  she  loves  it.  On  the 
other  hand,  a  great  many  men  are  indifferent  to 
their  children  in  infancy  and  are  drawn  to  them 
only  as  they  develop  intellectual  quality.  This  is 
just  the  time  when  woman  drifts  from  them. 
Qualified  by  civilized  custom,  the  attitude  of 
woman  toward  her  child  is  very  much  that  of 
the  cat  toward  her  kitten ;  as  soon  as  the  kitten 
is  a  few  weeks  old,  the  mother  neglects  it.  A  few 
months  later  she  will  not  know  it.  Her  part  is 
played.  So  it  is  not  uncommon  to  find  a  woman 
who  has  been  enthralled  by  her  baby  giving  it 
over  entirely  to  hired  help :  the  baby  is  growing 
intellectualized ;  it  needs  her  no  more  except  as  a 
kindly  but  calm  critic.     And  frequently  at  that 

40 


THE  INTELLIGENCE   OF  WOMAN 

time  the  father  begins  to  intervene,  to  control  the 
education,  to  prepare  for  the  future.  Whether  in 
the  mental  field  this  means  much  more  than  the 
difference  in  temperament  between  red  hair  and 
black  hair  (if  that  means  anything),  I  do  not 
know ;  but  it  is  singular  that  so  often  the  mother 
should  drift  away  from  her  child  just  at  the  mo- 
ment when  the  father  thinks  of  teaching  it  to 
ride  and  shoot  and  tell  the  truth.  Possibly  by 
that  time  her  critical  work  is  done. 

Indicative  of  the  influence  of  the  emotions  is 
the  peculiar  intensification  of  love  in  moments 
of  crisis,  such  as  war,  revolution,  or  accident. 
Men  do  not  escape  this  any  more  than  women: 
the  German  atrocities,  for  instance,  largely  pro- 
ceed from  extreme  excitement.  But  men  have 
but  slender  bonds  to  break,  being  nearly  all  ready 
to  take  their  pleasure  where  they  can,  while 
women  are  more  fastidious.  Woman  needs  a 
more  highly  charged  atmosphere,  the  whips  of 
fear  or  grief,  the  intoxication  of  glory.  When 
these  are  given  her,  her  emotions  more  readily 
break  down  her  reserves ;  and  it  is  not  remarkable 
that  in  times  of  war  there  should  be  an  increase 
in  illegitimate  births  as  well  as  an  increase  in 
marriages.     Woman's  intellect  under  those  pres- 

4i 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF  WOMAN 

sures  gives  way.  A  number  of  the  marriages 
contracted  by  British  soldiers  about  to  leave  for 
the  front  are  simple  manifestations  of  hysteria. 

As  for  caprice,  it  has  long  been  regarded  as 
woman's  privilege,  part  of  her  charm.  Man  was 
the  hunter,  and  his  prey  must  run.  Only  he  is 
annoyed  when  it  runs  too  fast.  He  is  ever  asking 
woman  to  charm  him  by  elusiveness  and  then 
complaining  because  she  eludes  him.  There  is 
hardly  a  man  who  would  not  to-day  echo  Sir 
Walter  Scott's  familiar  lines,  — 

"O  Woman !  in  our  hours  of  ease 
Uncertain,  coy,  and  hard  to  please, 
And  variable  as  the  shade 
By  the  light  quivering  aspen  made." 

It  is  not  woman's  fault.  The  poetry  of  the 
world  is  rilled  with  the  words  "to  win"  and  "to 
woo";  one  cannot  win  or  woo  one  who  does  not 
baffle ;  one  can  only  take  her,  and  men  are  not 
satisfied  to  do  only  that.  Man  loves  sincerity 
until  he  finds  it;  he  can  live  neither  with  it  nor 
without  it;  this  is  true  most  notably  in  the  lists 
of  love.  He  is  for  falsehood,  for  affectation,  lest 
the  prize  should  too  easily  be  won.  Both  sexes 
are  equally  guilty,  if  guilt  there  be. 

42 


THE  INTELLIGENCE   OF  WOMAN 

More  true  is  it  that  many  women  lie  and  curvet 
as  a  policy  because  they  believe  thus  best  to 
manage  men.  They  generally  believe  that  they 
can  manage  men.  They  look  upon  them  as  "poor 
dears."  They  honestly  believe  that  the  "poor 
dears"  cannot  cook,  or  run  houses,  or  trim  hats, 
ignoring  the  fact  that  the  "poor  dears"  do  these 
things  better  than  anybody,  in  kitchens,  in  hotels, 
and  in  hat  shops.  Especially  they  believe  that 
they  can  outwit  them  in  the  game  of  love.  This 
curious  idea  is  due  to  woman's  consciousness  of 
having  been  sought  after  in  the  past  and  told  that 
she  did  not  seek  man  but  was  sought  by  him. 
Centuries  of  thraldom  and  centuries  of  flattery 
have  caused  her  to  believe  this  —  the  poor  dear ! 

In  ordinary  times,  when  no  world-movements 
stimulate,  the  chief  exasperation  of  woman  resides 
in  jealousy.  It  differs  from  male  jealousy,  for  the 
male  is  generally  possessive,  the  female  competitive. 
I  suspect  that  Euripides  was  generalizing  rashly 
when  he  said  that  woman  is  woman's  natural  ally. 
She  is  too  sex-conscious  for  that,  and  many  of  us 
have  observed  the  annoyance  of  a  mother  when 
her  son  weds.  Competition  is  always  violent,  so 
much  so  that  woman  is  generally  mocking  or  angry 
if  a  man  praises  ever  so  slightly  another  woman. 

43 


THE  INTELLIGENCE   OF  WOMAN 

If  she  is  young  and  able  to  make  a  claim  on  all 
men,  she  tends  to  be  still  more  virulent  because 
her  claim  is  on  all  men.  This  is  partly  due  to  the 
marriage  market  and  its  restrictions,  but  it  is  also 
partly  natural.  No  doubt  because  it  is  natural, 
woman  attempts  to  conceal  that  jealousy,  nature 
being  generally  considered  ignoble  by  the  civilized 
world.  In  this  respect  we  must  accept  that  an 
assumption  of  coldness  is  considered  a  means  of 
enticing  man.  It  may  well  be  that,  where  woman 
does  not  exhibit  jealousy,  she  is  with  masterly 
skill  suggesting  to  the  man  a  problem :  why  is  she 
not  jealous  ?  On  which  follows  the  desire  to  make 
her  jealous,  and  entanglement. 

Because  of  these  powerful  preoccupations,  when 
woman  adopts  a  career  she  has  hitherto  frequently 
allowed  herself  to  be  diverted  therefrom  by  love. 
Up  to  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  it  was 
very  common  for  a  woman  to  abandon  the  stage, 
the  concert  platform,  and  so  forth,  when  she 
married.  A  change  has  come  about,  and  there  is 
a  growing  tendency  in  women,  whether  or  not  at 
the  expense  of  love  I  do  not  know,  to  retain  their 
occupations  when  they  marry.  But  the  tendency 
of  woman  still  is  to  revert  to  the  instinctive  func- 
tion.    In  days  to  come,  when  we  have  developed 

44 


THE  INTELLIGENCE   OF  WOMAN 

the  individual  and  broken  up  the  socialized  society 
in  which  we  live,  when  the  home  has  been  swept 
away  and  the  family  destroyed,  I  do  not  believe 
that  this  factor  will  operate  so  powerfully.  In 
the  way  of  change  stand  the  remnants  of  woman's 
slavish  habit.  No  longer  a  slave,  she  tends  to 
follow,  to  submit,  to  adjust  her  conduct  to  the 
wish  of  man,  and  it  is  significant  that  a  powerful 
man  is  seldom  henpecked.  The  henpecked  de- 
serve to  be  henpecked,  and  I  would  point  out 
that  there  is  no  intention  in  these  notes  to 
attempt  to  substitute  henpecked  husbands  for 
cockpecked  wives.  The  tendency  is  all  the 
other  way,  for  woman  tends  to  mould  herself 
to  man. 

A  number  of  cases  lie  before  me : 

Case  6 1  married  a  barrister.  Before  her  mar- 
riage she  lived  in  a  commercial  atmosphere ;  after 
marriage  she  grew  violently  legal  in  her  con- 
versation. Her  husband  developed  a  passion 
for  motoring;  so  did  Case  61.  Observe  that 
during  a  previous  attachment  to  a  doctor, 
Case  6 1  had  manifested  a  growing  interest  in 
medicine. 

Case  1 8  comes  from  a  hunting  family,  married  a 
literary  man,  and  within  a  few  years  has  ceased 

45 


THE  INTELLIGENCE   OF  WOMAN 

to  take  any  exercise  and  mixes  exclusively  with 
literary  people. 

Case  38,  on  becoming  engaged  to  a  member  of 
the  Indian  Civil  Service,  became  a  sedulous 
student  of  Indian  literature  and  religion.  On 
her  husband's  appointment  to  a  European  post, 
her  interest  did  not  diminish.  She  has  paid  a 
lengthy  visit  to  India. 

There  are  compensating  cases  among  men :  I 
have  two.  In  one  case  a  soldier  who  married  a 
literary  woman  has  turned  into  a  scholar.  In  the 
other  a  commercial  man,  who  married  a  popular 
actress,  has  been  completely  absorbed  by  the 
theater,  and  is  now  writing  successful  plays. 

It  would* appear  from  these  rather  disjointed 
notes  that  the  emotional  quality  in  woman  is 
more  or  less  at  war  with  her  intellectual  aims. 
Indeed  it  is  sometimes  suggested  that  where 
woman  appears,  narrowness  follows;  that  books 
by  women  are  mostly  confined  to  love,  are  not 
cosmic  in  feeling.  This  is  generally  true,  for 
reasons  which  I  hope  to  indicate  a  little  farther 
on;  but  it  is  not  true  that  books  where  women 
are  the  chief  characters  are  narrow.  Such  novels 
as  Anna  Karenina,  Madame  B ovary,  Une  Vie, 
Tess  of  the  D'Urbervilles  make  that  point  obvious. 

46 


THE   INTELLIGENCE    OF  WOMAN 

As  a  rule,  books  about  men,  touching  as  they  do, 
not  only  upon  love,  but  upon  art,  politics,  busi- 
ness, are  more  powerful  than  books  about  women. 
But  one  should  not  forget  that  books  written  round 
women  are  mostly  written  by  women.  As  women 
are  far  less  powerful  in  literature  than  men,  we 
must  not  conclude  that  books  about  women  are 
naturally  lesser  than  books  about  men.  The 
greatest  books  about  women  have  been  written 
by  men.  But  few  men  are  sufficiently  unpreju- 
diced to  grasp  women ;  only  a  genius  can  do  so, 
and  that  is  why  few  books  about  women  exist 
that  deserve  the  epithet  great.  It  remains  to  be 
seen  whether  an  increased  understanding  of  the 
affairs  of  the  world  will  develop  among  women  a 
literary  power  which,  together  with  the  world,  will 
embrace  herself. 

7 

In  the  attempt  to  indicate  what  the  future  may 
reserve  for  woman,  it  is  important  to  consider 
what  she  has  done,  because  she  has  achieved 
much  in  the  face  of  conservatism,  of  male  egotism, 
of  male  jealousy,  of  poverty,  of  ignorance,  and  of 
prejudice.  These  chains  are  weaker  to-day,  and 
the  goodwill  that  shall  not  die  will  break  them 

47 


THE  INTELLIGENCE   OF  WOMAN 

yet ;  but  many  women,  a  few  of  whose  names 
follow,  gave  while  enslaved  an  idea  of  woman's 
quality.     Examine  indeed  this  short  list : * 

Painting:  Angelica  Kauffmann,  Madame  Vigee 
le  Brun,  Rosa  Bonheur. 

Music  and  drama :  Rachel,  Siddons,  Ellen  Terry, 
Sarah  Bernhardt,  Teresa  Carreno,  Sadayacco. 

Literature:  George  Eliot,  Jane  Austen,  the 
Brontes,  Madame  de  Stael,  Madame  de  Sevigne, 
Christina  Rossetti,  Elizabeth  Browning.  More 
recent,  Mrs.  Alice  Meynell,  Miss  May  Sinclair, 
"Lucas  Malet,"  Mrs.  Edith  Wharton,  "Vernon 
Lee." 

Social  service  and  politics:  Mrs.  Charlotte  Per- 
kins Gilman,  Miss  Jane  Addams,  Madame  Mon- 
tessori,  Mrs.  Fawcett,  Mrs  Ennis  Richmond, 
Mrs.  Beecher  Stowe,  Florence  Nightingale,  Mrs. 
Havelock  Ellis,  Mrs.  Sidney  Webb,  Miss  Clemen- 
tina Black,  Josephine  Butler,  Mrs.  Pankhurst, 
Elizabeth  Fry.  Observe  the  curious  case  of  Mrs. 
Hetty  Green,  financier. 

This  list  could  be  enormously  increased,  and, 
as  it  is,  it  is  a  random  list,  omitting  women  of 

1  I  associate  the  arts  with  intellectual  quality.  (See  "Woman 
and  the  Paintpot. ")  Broadly,  I  believe  that  all  achievements, 
artistic  or  otherwise,  proceed  from  intellect. 

48 


THE   INTELLIGENCE  OF  WOMAN 

distinction  and  including  women  of  lesser  distinc- 
tion. But  still  it  contains  no  unknown  names, 
and,  though  I  do  not  pretend  that  it  compares 
with  a  similar  list  of  men,  it  is  an  indication.  I 
am  anxious  that  the  reader  should  not  think  that 
I  want  to  compare  Angelica  Kauffmann  with 
Leonardo,  or  Jane  Austen  with  Shakespeare. 
In  every  walk  of  life  since  history  began  there 
have  been  a  score  of  men  of  talent  for  every 
woman  of  talent,  and  there  has  never  been  a 
female  genius.  That  should  not  impress  us : 
genius  is  an  accident;  it  may  be  a  disease.  It 
may  be  that  mankind  has  produced  only  two  or 
three  geniuses,  and  that  one  or  two  women  in 
days  to  come  may  redress  the  balance,  and  it 
may  be  that  several  women  have  been  mute 
inglorious  Miltons.  We  do  not  know.  But  in 
the  matter  of  talent,  notably  in  the  arts,  I  sub- 
mit that  woman  can  be  hopeful,  particularly 
because  most  of  the  names  I  give  are  those  of 
women  of  the  nineteenth  century.  The  nine- 
teenth century  was  better  for  woman  than  the 
eighteenth,  the  eighteenth  better  than  the  seven- 
teenth :  what  could  be  more  significant  ?  In  the 
arts  I  feel  that  woman  has  never  had  her  oppor- 
tunity.    She    has    been    hailed    as    an    executive 

49 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF  WOMAN 

artist,  actress,  singer,  pianist;  but  as  a  creator, 
novelist,  poet,  painter,  she  has  been  steadfastly 
discounted,  —  told  that  what  she  did  was  very 
pretty,  until  she  grew  unable  to  do  anything  but 
the  pretty-pretty.  She  has  grown  up  in  an  atmos- 
phere of  patronage  and  roses,  deferential,  subser- 
vient. She  has  persistently  been  told  that  certain 
subjects  were  "not  fit  for  nice  young  ladies" ;  she 
has  been  shut  away  from  the  expression  of  life. 

Here  is  a  typical  masculine  attitude,  that  of 
Mr.  George  Moore,  in  A  Modern  Lover.  Mr. 
George  Moore,  who  seems  to  know  a  great  deal 
about  females  but  less  about  women,  causes  in 
this  book  Harding,  the  novelist,  who  generally 
expresses  him,  to  criticize  George  Sand,  George 
Eliot,  and  Rosa  Bonheur:  "If  they  have  created 
anything  new,  how  is  it  that  their  art  is  exactly 
like  our  own?  I  defy  any  one  to  say  that  George 
Eliot's  novels  are  a  woman's  writing,  or  that  The 
Horse  Fair  was  not  painted  by  a  man.  I  defy 
you  to  show  me  a  trace  of  feminality  in  anything 
they  ever  did ;  that  is  the  point  I  raise.  I  say 
that  women  as  yet  have  not  been  able  to  transfuse 
into  art  a  trace  of  their  sex;  in  other  words,  un- 
able to  assume  a  point  of  view  of  their  own,  they 
have  adopted  ours." 

5o 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF  WOMAN 

This  is  cool !  I  have  read  a  great  deal  of  Mr. 
George  Moore's  art  criticism :  when  it  deals  with 
the  work  of  a  man  he  never  seeks  the  masculine 
touch.  He  judges  a  man's  work  as  art;  he  will 
not  judge  a  woman's  work  as  art.  He  starts 
from  the  assumption  that  man's  art  is  art,  while 
woman's  art  is  —  well,  woman's  art.  That  is  the 
sort  of  thing  which  has  discouraged  woman ;  that 
is  the  atmosphere  of  tolerance  and  good-conduct 
prizes  which  she  has  breathed,  and  that  is  the 
stifling  stupidity  through  which  she  is  breaking. 
She  will  break  through,  for  I  believe  that  she  loves 
the  arts  better  than  does  man.  She  is  better 
ground  for  the  development  of  a  great  artist,  for 
she  approaches  art  with  sympathy,  while  the 
great  bulk  of  men  approach  it  with  fear  and  dis- 
like, shrinking  from  the  idea  that  it  may  disturb 
their  self-complacency.  The  prejudice  goes  so  far 
that,  while  women  are  attracted  to  artists  as  lovers, 
men  are  generally  afraid  of  women  who  practice 
the  arts,  or  they  dislike  them.  It  is  not  a  question 
of  sex ;  it  is  a  question  of  art.  All  that  is  part  of 
sexual  heredity,  of  which  I  must  say  a  few  words. 

But,  before  doing  so,  let  me  waste  a  few  lines 
on  the  male  conception  of  love,  which  has  in- 
fluenced woman   because   love  is   still   her   chief 

5i 


THE   INTELLIGENCE   OF   WOMAN 

business.  To  this  day,  though  it  dies  slowly,  the 
male  attitude  is  still  the  attitude  to  a  toy.  It  is 
the  attitude  of  Nietzsche  when  saying,  "Man  is 
for  war,  woman  for  the  recreation  of  the  warrior." 
This  idea  is  so  prevalent  that  Great  Britain,  in 
its  alleged  struggle  against  Nietzschean  ideas,  is 
making  abundant  use  of  the  Nietzschean  point  of 
view.  No  wonder,  for  the  idea  runs  not  only 
through  men  but  through  Englishmen  :  "woman  is 
the  reward  of  war,"  —  that  is  a  prevalent  idea, 
notably  among  men  who  make  war  in  the  neigh- 
borhood of  waste-paper  baskets.  It  has  been 
exemplified  by  the  British  war  propaganda  in 
every  newspaper  and  in  every  music  hall,  begging 
women  to  refuse  to  be  seen  with  a  man  unless  he 
is  in  khaki.  It  has  had  government  recognition 
in  the  shape  of  recruiting  posters,  asking  women 
"whether  their  best  boy  is  in  khaki."  It  has  been 
popularly  formulated  on  picture  postcards  touch- 
ingly  inscribed,  "No  gun,  no  girl." 

All  that  —  woman  as  the  prize  (a  theory  re- 
pudiated in  the  case  of  Belgian  atrocities)  —  is  an 
idea  deeply  rooted  in  man.  In  the  eigh  teen-six  ties 
the  customary  proposal  was,  "Will  you  be  mine?" 
Very  faintly  signs  are  showing  that  men  will  yet 
say,  "May  I  be  yours?"     It  will  take  time,  for 

52 


THE  INTELLIGENCE   OF  WOMAN 

the  possessive,  the  dominating  instinct  in  man, 
is  still  strong;  and  long  may  it  live,  for  that  is 
the  vigor  of  the  race.  Only  we  do  not  want  that 
instinct  to  carry  man  away,  any  more  than  we 
want  a  well-bred  horse  to  clench  its  teeth  upon 
the  bit  and  bolt. 

We  want  to  do  everything  we  can  to  get  rid  of 
what  may  be  called  the  creed  of  the  man  of  the 
world,  which  is  suggested  as  repulsively  as  any- 
where in  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling's  Departmental 
Ditties : 

"My  Son,  if  a  maiden  deny  thee  and  scufflingly  bid  thee 

give  o'er, 
Yet  lip  meets  with  lip  at  the  lastward  —  get  out !    She  has 

been  there  before. 
They  are  pecked  on  the  ear  and  the  chin  and  the  nose  who 

are  lacking  in  lore. 

"Pleasant  the  snaffle  of  Courtship,  improving  the  manners 
and  carriage ; 

But  the  colt  who  is  wise  will  abstain  from  the  terrible  thorn- 
bit  of  Marriage. 

Blister  we  not  for  bursati?     So  when  the  heart  is  vext, 

The  pain  of  one  maiden's  refusal  is  drowned  in  the  pain  of 
the  next." 

There  is  a  great  deal  of  this  sort  of  thing  in 
Moliere,    in   Thackeray,    in    Casanova.     The   old 

53 


THE  INTELLIGENCE  OF  WOMAN 

idea  of  woman  eluding  and  lying;  of  woman 
stigmatized  if  she  has  "been  there  before",  while 
man  may  brag  of  having  "been  there  before"  as 
often  as  possible ;  of  man  lovelacing  for  his  credit's 
sake  and  woman  adventuring  at  her  peril 

8 

I  submit  that  each  man  and  woman  has  two 
heredities :  one  the  ordinary  heredity  from  two 
parents  and  their  forbears,  the  other  more  complex 
and  purely  mental  —  the  tradition  of  sex.  Hered- 
ity through  sex  may  be  denned  as  the  resultant  of 
consecutive  environments.  I  mean  that  a  woman, 
for  instance,  is  considerably  influenced  by  the 
ideas  and  attitudes  of  her  mother,  grandmothers, 
and  all  female  ascendants.  They  had  a  tradition, 
and  it  is  the  basis  of  her  outlook.  Any  boy  born 
in  a  slum  can,  as  he  grows  educated,  realize  that 
the  world  lies  before  him ;  literature  and  history 
soon  show  him  that  many  as  lowly  as  he  have 
risen  to  fame,  as  artists,  scientists,  statesmen; 
he  may  even  dream  of  becoming  a  king,  like 
Bonaparte.  To  the  boy  nothing  is  impossible; 
if  he  is  brave,  there  is  nothing  he  may  not  tear 
from  the  world.  He  knows  it,  and  it  strengthens 
him;    it  gives  him  confidence.     What  his  fathers 

54 


THE  INTELLIGENCE  OF  WOMAN 

did,  he  may  do;  the  male  sexual  heredity  is  a 
proud  heritage,  and  only  yesterday  a  man  said  to 
me,  "  Thank  God,  I  am  a  man."  Contrast  with 
this  the  corresponding  type  of  heredity  in  woman. 
Woman  carries  in  her  the  slave  tradition  of  her 
maternal  forbears,  of  people  who  never  did  any- 
thing because  they  were  never  allowed  to;  who 
were  told  that  they  could  do  nothing  but  please, 
until  they  at  last  believed  it,  until  by  believing 
they  lost  the  power  of  action;  who  were  never 
taught,  and  because  uneducated  were  ashamed; 
who  were  never  helped  to  understand  the  work  of 
the  world,  political,  financial,  scientific,  and,  there- 
fore, grew  to  believe  that  such  realms  were  not  for 
them.  I  need  not  labor  the  comparison :  obviously 
any  woman,  inspired  by  centuries  of  dependence, 
instinctively  feels  that,  while  everything  is  open 
to  man,  very  little  is  open  to  her.  She  comes  into 
the  arena  with  a  leaden  sword ;  in  most  cases  she 
hardly  has  energy  to  struggle. 

A  little  while  ago,  when  Britain  was  floating  a 
large  war  loan,  one  woman  told  me  that  she  could 
not  understand  its  terms.  We  went  into  them 
together,  and  she  found  that  she  understood  per- 
fectly. She  was  surprised.  She  had  always  as- 
sumed that  she  did  not  understand  finance,  and 

55 


THE  INTELLIGENCE  OF  WOMAN 

the  assumption  had  kept  her  down,  prevented  her 
from  understanding  it.  Likewise,  and  until  they 
try,  many  women  think  they  cannot  read  maps 
and  time-tables. 

With  that  heredity  environment  has  coalesced, 
and  I  think  no  one  will  deny  that  a  continuous 
suggestion  of  helplessness  and  mental  inferiority 
must  affect  woman.  It  means  most  during  youth, 
when  one  is  easily  snubbed,  when  one  looks  up  to 
one's  elders.  By  the  time  one  has  found  out 
one's  elders,  it  is  generally  too  late;  the  imprint 
is  made,  and  woman,  looking  upon  herself  as  in- 
ferior, hands  on  to  her  daughters  the  old  slavery 
that  was  in  her  forbears'  blood.  To  me  this  seems 
foolish,  and  during  the  past  thirty  or  forty  years 
a  great  many  have  come  to  think  so  too ;  they  have 
shown  it  by  opening  wide  to  woman  the  doors  of 
colleges,  many  occupations  and  professions.  Many 
are  to-day  impatient  because  woman  has  not  done 
enough,  has  not  justified  this  new  freedom.  I 
think  they  are  unjust;  they  do  not  understand 
that  a  generation  of  training  and  of  relative  liberty 
is  not  enough  to  undo  evils  neolithic  in  origin. 
All  that  we  are  doing  to-day  by  opening  gates  to 
women  is  to  counter-influence  the  old  tradition, 
to  implant  in  the  woman  of  to-morrow  the  new 

56 


THE  INTELLIGENCE  OF  WOMAN 

faith  that  nothing  is  beyond  her  powers.  It  lies 
with  the  woman  of  to-day  to  make  that  faith  so 
strong  as  to  move  mountains.  I  think  she  will 
succeed,  for  I  doubt  whether  any  mental  power  is 
inherent  in  sex.  There  are  differences  of  degree, 
differences  of  quality;  but  I  suspect  that  they 
are  mainly  due  to  sexual  heredity,  to  environ- 
ment, to  suggestion,  and  that  indeed,  if  I  may 
trench  upon  biology,  human  creatures  are  never 
entirely  male  or  entirely  female ;  there  are  no  men, 
there  are  no  women,  but  only  sexual  majorities. 

The  evolution  of  woman  toward  mental  assimila- 
tion with  man,  though  particularly  swift  in  the 
past  half-century,  has  been  steady  since  the  Renais- 
sance. Roughly,  one  might  say  that  the  woman 
of  the  year  1450  had  no  education  at  all;  in  this 
she  was  more  like  man  than  she  ever  was  later, 
for  the  knights  could  not  read,  and  learning  existed 
only  among  the  priests.  The  time  had  not  yet 
come  for  the  learned  nobleman ;  Sir  Philip  Sidney, 
the  Earl  of  Surrey,  the  Euphuists,  had  not  yet 
dispelled  the  mediaeval  fogs,  and  few  among  the 
laymen,  save  Cheke  and  Ascham,  had  any  learn- 
ing at  all.  In  those  days  woman  sang  songs  and 
brought  up  babies.  Two  hundred  and  fifty  years 
later   the  well-to-do   woman   had   become   some- 

57 


THE   INTELLIGENCE  OF  WOMAN 

body;  she  could  even  read,  though  she  mainly 
read  tales  such  as  The  Miraculous  Love  of  Prince 
Alzamore.  She  was  growing  significant  in  the 
backstairs  of  politics.  Sometimes  she  took  a  bath. 
Round  about  1850  she  turned  into  the  "  perfect 
lady"  who  kept  an  album  bound  in  morocco 
leather.  She  wrote  verses  that  embodied  yearn- 
ings. Often  she  had  a  Turkish  parlor,  and  usually 
as  many  babies  as  she  could.  But  already  the 
Brontes  and  George  Eliot  had  come  to  knock  at 
the  door;  Miss  Braddon  was  promising  to  be,  if 
not  a  glory,  at  least  a  power,  and  before  twenty 
years  were  out,  John  Stuart  Mill  was  to  lead  the 
first  suffragettes  to  the  House  of  Commons. 

To-day  it  is  another  picture :  woman  in  every 
trade  except  those  in  which  she  intends  to  be; 
woman  demanding  and  using  political  power; 
woman  governing  her  own  property;  woman 
senior  to  man  in  the  civil  service.  She  has  not 
yet  her  charter,  and  still  suffers  much  from  the 
tradition  of  inferiority,  from  her  lack  of  confidence 
in  herself.  But  many  women  are  all  ambition, 
and  within  the  last  year  two  young  women  novel- 
ists have  convinced  me  that  the  thing  they  most 
desire  is  to  be  great  in  their  art.  Whether  they 
will  succeed  does  not  matter  much ;    what  does 

58 


THE  INTELLIGENCE   OF  WOMAN 

matter  is  that  they  should  harbor  such  a  wish. 
Whether  woman's  physical  disabilities,  her  present 
bias  toward  unduly  moral  and  inadequately  in- 
tellectual judgments,  will  forever  hamper  her,  I 
do  not  know;  but  I  do  not  think  so.  Whether 
the  influence  of  woman,  more  inherently  lawless, 
more  anarchic  than  man,  will  result  in  the  break- 
ing down  of  conventions  and  the  despising  of  the 
law,  I  do  not  know  either.  But  if  the  world  is  to 
be  remoulded,  I  think  it  much  more  likely  to  be 
remoulded  by  woman  than  by  man,  simply  be- 
cause that  as  a  sex  he  is  in  power,  and  the  people 
who  are  in  power  never  want  to  alter  anything. 

Woman's  rebellion  is  everywhere  indicated  :  her 
brilliance,  her  failings,  her  unreasonableness,  all 
these  are  excellent  signs  of  her  revolt.  She  is 
even  revolting  against  her  own  beauty ;  often  she 
neglects  her  clothes,  her  hair,  her  complexion,  her 
teeth.  This  is  a  pity,  but  it  must  not  be  taken 
too  seriously :  men  on  active  service  grow  beards, 
and  woman  in  her  emancipation  campaign  is  still 
too  busy  to  think  of  the  art  of  charming.  I  sus- 
pect that  as  time  passes  and  she  suffers  less  in- 
tolerably from  a  sense  of  injustice,  she  will  revert 
to  the  old  graces.  The  art  of  charming  was  a 
response  to  convention;   and  of  late  years  uncon- 

59 


THE   INTELLIGENCE  OF  WOMAN 

ventionality,  a  great  deal  of  which  is  ridiculous,  has 
grown  much  more  among  women  than  among  men. 
That  is  not  wonderful,  for  there  were  so  many 
things  woman  might  not  do.  Almost  any  move- 
ment would  bring  her  up  against  a  barrier;  that 
is  why  it  seems  that  she  does  nothing  in  the  world 
except  break  barriers.  How  genuine  woman's  re- 
bellion is  no  man  can  say.  It  may  be  that  woman's 
impulse  toward  male  occupations  and  rights  is 
only  a  reaction  against  the  growing  difficulty  of 
gaining  a  mate,  children,  and  a  home.  But  I 
very  much  more  believe  that  woman  is  straining 
toward  a  new  order,  that  the  swift  evolution  of 
her  mind  is  leading  her  to  contest  more  and  more 
violently  the  assumption  that  there  are  ineradicable 
differences  between  the  male  and  the  female  mind. 
As  she  grows  more  capable  of  grasping  at  educa- 
tion, she  will  become  more  worthy  of  it;  her  in- 
tellect will  harden,  tend  to  resemble  that  of  man ; 
and  so,  having  escaped  from  the  emptiness  of  the 
past  into  the  special  fields  which  have  been  con- 
ceded her,  she  will  make  for  broader  fields,  fields 
so  vast  that  they  will  embrace  the  world. 


60 


II 

FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


The  Feminist  propaganda  —  which  should  not 
be  confounded  with  the  Suffrage  agitation  —  rests 
upon  a  revolutionary  biological  principle.  Sub- 
stantially, the  Feminists  argue  that  there  are  no 
men  and  that  there  are  no  women ;  there  are  only 
sexual  majorities.  To  put  the  matter  less  ob- 
scurely, the  Feminists  base  themselves  on  Wein- 
inger's  theory,  according  to  which  the  male  prin- 
ciple may  be  found  in  woman,  and  the  female 
principle  in  man.  It  follows  that  they  recognize 
no  masculine  or  feminine  " spheres' \  and  that  they 
propose  to  identify  absolutely  the  conditions  of  the 
sexes. 

Now  there  are  two  kinds  of  people  who  labor 
under  illusions  as  regards  the  Feminist  movement, 
its  opponents  and  its  supporters :  both  sides  tend 
to  limit  the  area  of  its  influence;    in  few  cases 

61 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


does  either  realize  the  movement  as  revolutionary. 
The  methods  are  to  have  revolutionary  results, 
are  destined  to  be  revolutionary;  as  a  convinced 
but  cautious  Feminist,  I  do  not  think  it  honest 
or  advisable  to  conceal  this  fact.  I  have  myself 
been  charged  by  a  very  well-known  English  author 
(whose  name  I  may  not  give,  as  the  charge  was 
contained  in  a  private  letter)  with  having  "let  the 
cat  out  of  the  bag"  in  my  little  book,  Woman  and 
To-morrow.  Well,  I  do  not  think  it  right  that  the 
cat  should  be  kept  in  the  bag.  Feminists  should 
not  want  to  triumph  by  fraud.  As  promoters  of  a 
sex  war,  they  should  not  hesitate  to  declare  it, 
and  I  have  little  sympathy  with  the  pretenses  of 
those  who  contend  that  one  may  alter  everything 
while  leaving  everything  unaltered. 

An  essential  difference  between  "Feminism"  and 
"Suffragism"  is  that  the  Suffrage  is  but  part  of 
the  greater  propaganda;  while  Suffragism  desires 
to  remove  an  inequality,  Feminism  purports  to 
alter  radically  the  mental  attitudes  of  men  and 
women.  The  sexes  are  to  be  induced  to  recognize 
each  other's  status,  and  to  bring  this  recognition 
to  such  a  point  that  equality  will  not  even  be 
challenged.  Thus  Feminists  are  interested  rather 
in  ideas  than  in  facts ;   if,  for  instance,  they  wish 

62 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


to  make  accessible  to  women  the  profession  of 
barrister,  it  is  not  because  they  wish  women  to 
practice  as  barristers,  but  because  they  want 
men  to  view  without  surprise  the  fact  that  women 
may  be  barristers.  And  they  have  no  use  for 
knightliness  and  chivalry. 

Therein  lies  the  mental  revolution :  while  the 
Suffragists  are  content  to  attain  immediate  ends, 
the  Feminists  are  aiming  at  ultimate  ends.  They 
contend  that  it  is  unhealthy  for  the  race  that  man 
should  not  recognize  woman  as  his  equal;  that 
this  makes  him  intolerant,  brutal,  selfish,  and 
sentimentally  insincere.  They  believe  likewise 
that  the  race  suffers  because  women  do  not  look 
upon  men  as  their  peers;  that  this  makes  them 
servile,  untruthful,  deceitful,  narrow,  and  in  every 
sense  inferior.  More  particularly  concerned  with 
women,  it  is  naturally  upon  them  and  their  prob- 
lems that  they  are  bringing  their  first  attention  to 
bear. 

The  word  "inferior"  at  once  arouses  comment, 
for  here  the  Feminist  often  distinguishes  himself 
from  the  Suffragist.  He  frequently  accepts 
woman's  present  inferiority,  but  he  believes  this 
inferiority  to  be  transient,  not  permanent.  He 
considers  that  by  removing  the  handicaps  imposed 

63 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


upon  women,  they  will  be  able  to  win  an  adequate 
proportion  of  races.  His  case  against  the  treat- 
ment of  women  covers  every  form  of  human  rela- 
tion :  the  arts,  the  home,  the  trades,  and  marriage. 
In  every  one  of  these  directions  he  proposes  to 
make  revolutionary  changes. 

The  question  of  the  arts  need  not  long  detain  us. 
It  is  perfectly  clear  that  woman  has  had  in  the 
past  neither  the  necessary  artistic  training,  nor 
the  necessary  atmosphere  of  encouragement ;  that 
families  have  been  reluctant  to  spend  money  on 
their  daughter's  music,  her  painting,  her  literary 
education,  with  the  lavishness  demanded  of  them 
by  their  son's  professional  or  business  career. 
Feminists  believe  that  when  men  and  women  have 
been  leveled,  this  state  of  things  will  cease  to  pre- 
vail. 

In  the  trades,  English  Feminists  resent  the  fact 
that  women  are  excluded  from  the  law,  generally 
speaking,  the  ministry,  the  higher  ranks  of  busi- 
ness and  of  the  Civil  Service  and  so  forth,  and 
practically  from  hospital  appointments;  also  that 
women  are  paid  low  wages  for  work  similar  to  that 
of  men. 

They  complain  too  that  the  home  demands  of 
woman  too  great  an  expenditure  of  energy,   too 

64 


FEMINIST   INTENTIONS 


much  time,  too  much  labor ;  that  the  concentration 
of  her  mind  upon  the  continual  purchasing  and 
cooking  of  food,  on  cleaning,  on  the  care  of  the 
child,  is  unnecessarily  developed;  they  doubt  if 
the  home  can  be  maintained  as  it  is  if  woman  is  to 
develop  as  a  free  personality. 

With  marriage,  lastly,  they  are  perhaps  most 
concerned.  Though  they  are  not  in  the  main 
prepared  to  advocate  free  union,  they  are  em- 
phatically arrayed  against  modern  marriage,  which 
they  look  upon  as  slave  union.  The  somewhat 
ridiculous  modifications  of  the  marriage  service 
introduced  by  a  few  couples  in  America  and  by 
one  in  England,  in  which  the  word  "obey"  was 
deleted  from  the  bride's  pledge,  can  be  taken  as 
indicative  of  the  Feminist  attitude.  Their  griev- 
ances against  the  home,  against  the  treatment  of 
women  in  the  trades,  are  closely  connected  with 
the  marriage  question,  for  they  believe  that  the 
desire  of  man  to  have  a  housekeeper,  of  woman  to 
have  a  protector,  deeply  influence  the  complexion 
of  unions  which  they  would  base  exclusively  upon 
love,  and  it  follows  that  they  do  not  accept  as 
effective  marriage  any  union  where  the  attitudes 
of  love  do  not  exist.  For  them  who  favor  absolute 
equality,   partnership,    sharing   of   responsibilities 

65 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


and  privileges,  modern  marriage  represents  a  con- 
dition of  sex-slavery  into  which  woman  is  fre- 
quently compelled  to  enter  because  she  needs  to 
live,  and  in  which  she  must  often  remain,  however 
abominable  the  conditions  under  which  the  union 
is  maintained,  because  man,  master  of  the  purse, 
is  master  of  the  woman. 

Generally,  then,  the  Feminists  are  in  opposition 
to  most  of  the  world  institutions.  For  them  the 
universe  is  based  upon  the  subjection  of  woman : 
subjection  by  law,  and  subjection  by  convention. 
Before  considering  what  modifications  the  Femi- 
nists wish  to  introduce  into  the  social  system,  a 
few  words  must  be  said  as  to  this  distinction  be- 
tween convention  and  the  law. 

2 

Convention,  which  is  nothing  but  petrified  habit, 
has  lain  upon  woman  perhaps  more  heavily  than 
any  law,  for  the  law  can  be  eluded  with  compara- 
tive ease,  and  she  who  eludes  it  may  very  well 
become  a  heroine,  merely  because  we  are  mostly 
anarchists  and  dislike  the  law.  Every  man  is  in 
himself  a  minority,  and  is  opposed  to  the  law 
because  the  law  is  the  expression  of  the  will  of  the 
majority,  that  is  to  say,  the  will  of  the  vulgar,  of 

66 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


the  norm.  But  convention  is  far  more  subtle : 
it  is  the  result  of  the  common  agreement  of  wills. 
Therefore,  as  it  is  a  product  of  unanimity,  the 
penalties  which  follow  on  the  infractions  of  its 
behests  are  terrible ;  she  who  infringes  it  becomes, 
not  a  heroine,  but  an  outcast.  The  law  is,  then, 
nothing  by  the  side  of  etiquette. 

Hence  Feminist  propaganda.  While  the  Suf- 
fragists wish  to  alter  the  law,  the  Feminists  wish 
to  alter  also  the  conventions.  It  may  not  be  too 
much  to  say  that  they  would  almost  be  content 
with  existing  laws  if  they  could  change  the  point 
of  view  of  man,  make  him  take  for  granted  that 
women  may  smoke,  or  ride  astride,  or  fight; 
cease  to  be  surprised  because  Madame  Dieulafoy 
chooses  to  wear  trousers;  briefly,  renounce  the 
subjective  fetich  of  sex.  Still,  as  they  realize  that 
states  become  more  socialistic  every  day,  they 
realize  also  that  through  the  law  only  can  they 
hope  to  change  manners.  The  mental  revolution 
which  they  intend  to  effect  must  therefore  be 
prefaced  by  a  legal  revolution. 

The  first  Feminist  intention  is  economic,  — 
proceeds  on  two  lines : 

i.  They  intend  to  open  every  occupation  to 
women. 

67 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


2.  They  intend  to  level  the  wages  of  women  and 
men. 

As  regards  the  first  point,  they  are  not  as  a  rule 
unreasonable.  If  they  demand  that  women  should 
practice  the  law  as  they  do  in  France,  preach  the 
Gospel  as  they  do  in  the  United  States  of  America, 
bear  arms,  as  in  Dahomey,  it  is  not  because  they 
attach  any  great  value  to  these  occupations,  but 
because  they  consider  that  any  limitation  put 
upon  woman's  activities  is  intrinsically  degrading ; 
so  keenly  do  they  feel  this,  that  some  serious  Femi- 
nists took  part  some  years  ago  in  the  controversy  on, 
"Are  there  female  angels?" 

The  second  point  is  more  important.  It  is  a 
well-established  fact  that  women  are  paid  less 
than  men  for  the  same  work :  for  instance,  in 
England,  women  begin  at  wages  which  are  less 
than  those  of  men  as  teachers,  post-office  and 
other  civil  servants.  The  Feminists  are  not  pre- 
pared to  agree  that  this  condition  is  due  to  some 
inherent  inferiority  of  woman :  in  their  view  her 
inferiority  is  transitory,  is  due  to  her  inferior 
position.  One  Feminist,  C.  Gascoigne  Hartley, 
in  The  Truth  About  Women,  outlines  a  bold  hypoth- 
esis: "What,  then,  is  the  real  cause  of  the  low- 
ness  of  remuneration  offered  to  women  for  work 

68 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


when  compared  with  men?  Thousands  of  women 
and  girls  receive  wages  that  are  insufficient  to 
support  life.  They  do  not  die,  they  live;  but 
how?  The  answer  is  plain.  Woman  possesses  a 
marketable  value  attached  to  her  personality 
which  man  has  not  got.  The  woman's  sex  is  a 
saleable  thing."  Briefly,  if  a  woman  works  less 
well  than  a  man,  less  fast,  less  continuously,  it  is 
because  she  is  inadequately  rewarded.  They  re- 
verse the  common  position  that  woman  is  not  well 
paid  because  woman  is  not  competent,  basing 
themselves  on  the  parallel  that  liberty  alone  fits 
men  for  liberty.  They  argue  that  woman  is  not 
competent  because  she  is  not  well  paid ;  conse- 
quently, those  Feminists  who  are  inclined  toward 
Radicalism  in  politics  demand  a  minimum  wage 
in  all  trades,  which  shall  be  the  same  for  women 
and  men. 

The  economic  change  will  be  brought  about  by 
revolutionary  methods,  by  sex  strikes  and  sex 
wars.  The  gaining  of  the  vote  is,  in  the  Feminist's 
view,  nothing  but  an  affair  of  outposts.  Con- 
scious propagandists  do  not  intend  to  allow  the 
female  vote  to  be  split  as  it  might  recently  have 
been  between  Mr.  Roosevelt,  Mr.  Wilson,  and  Mr. 
Taft.     They   intend    to    use   the   vote    to   make 

69 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


women  vote  as  women,  and  not  as  citizens;  that 
is  to  say,  they  propose  to  sell  the  female  vote  en 
bloc  to  the  party  that  bids  highest  for  it  in  the 
economic  field.  To  the  party  that  will,  as  a  pre- 
liminary, pledge  itself  to  level  male  and  female 
wages  in  government  employ,  will  be  given  the 
Feminist  vote ;  and  if  no  party  will  bid,  then  it  is 
the  Feminist  intention  to  run  special  candidates 
for  all  offices,  to  split  the  male  parties,  and  to 
involve  them  in  consecutive  disasters  such  as  the 
one  which  befell  the  Republican  party  in  the  last 
presidential  election  in  the  United  States. 

Side  by  side  with  this  purely  political  action, 
Feminists  intend  to  use  industrial  strikes  in 
exactly  the  same  manner  as  do  the  Syndicalist 
railwaymen,  miners,  and  postmen  of  Europe ;  well 
aware  that  they  have  captured  a  number  of  trades, 
such  as  millinery,  domestic  service,  restaurant  at- 
tendance, and  so  forth,  and  large  portions  of  other 
trades,  such  as  cotton-spinning  in  Lancashire, 
they  propose  to  use  as  a  basis  the  vote  and  the 
political  education  that  follows  thereon,  to  induce 
women  to  group  themselves  in  women's  trade- 
unions,  by  means  of  which  they  will  hold  up  trades, 
and  when  they  are  strong  enough,  hold  up  society 
itself. 

70 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


I  enunciate  these  views  with  full  sympathy, 
which  can  hardly  be  refused  when  one  realizes  that 
the  sweated  trades  are  almost  entirely  in  the 
hands  of  women,  —  laundry,  box-making,  toys, 
artificial  flowers,  and  the  like.  The  fact  that  the 
underpaid  trades  are  women's  trades,  and  that  the 
British  Government  has  been  compelled  to  in- 
stitute wage-boards  to  bring  up  women's  pay  from 
four  cents  an  hour  to  the  imposing  figure  of  six 
cents,  and  the  recent  white-slavery  investigations 
in  America,  are  evidence  enough  that  public 
opinion  should  hesitate  before  blaming  any  indus- 
trial steps  women  may  choose  to  take.  For  it 
should  not  be  forgotten  that  woman  risks  more 
than  comfort  and  health,  and  that  the  under- 
payment of  her  sex  often  forces  her  to  degradation. 

Conscious  of  the  temporary  inferiority  of  woman, 
an  inferiority  traceable  to  centuries  of  neglect  and 
belittling  patronage,  the  Feminists  propose  to  in- 
crease woman's  power  by  making  her  fitter  for 
power.  They  are  well  aware  that  the  enormous 
majority  of  women  receive  but  an  inferior  educa- 
tion, that  in  their  own  homes,  especially  in  the 
South  of  England,  they  are  not  encouraged  to 
read  the  newspaper  (which  I  believe  to  be  a  more 
powerful  instrument  of  intellectual  development 

7i 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


than  the  average  serious  book),  and  that  any  at- 
tempt on  their  part  to  acquire  more  information, 
to  attend  lectures,  to  join  debating  clubs,  tends  to 
lower  their  " charm  value"  in  the  eyes  of  men. 
That  point  of  view  they  are  determined  to  alter 
in  the  male.  They  propose  to  kill  the  prejudice 
by  the  homoeopathic  method :  that  is  to  say,  to 
educate  woman  more  because  man  thinks  she  is 
already  too  educated.  Briefly,  to  kill  poison  by 
more  poison.  For  this  purpose  they  intend  to 
throw  open  education  of  all  grades  to  women  as 
well  as  to  men,  to  remove  such  differences  as  exist 
in  England,  where  a  woman  cannot  obtain  an 
Oxford  or  Cambridge  degree.  They  propose  to 
raise  the  school  age  of  both  sexes,  and  to  not  less 
than  sixteen.  The  object  of  this,  so  far  as  women 
are  concerned,  is  to  prevent  the  exploitation  of 
little  girls  of  fourteen,  notably  as  domestic  servants. 
Some  Feminists  favor  coeducation,  on  the  plea 
that  it  enables  the  sexes  to  understand  each  other, 
and  these  build  principally  on  the  success  of 
American  schools.  A  more  violent  section,  how- 
ever, desires  to  place  the  education  of  girls  entirely 
in  the  hands  of  women,  partly  because  they  wish 
to  enhance  the  sex  war,  and  partly  because  they 
consider  that  continual  intercourse  between  the 

72 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


sexes  tends  to  deprive  ultimate  love  of  its  mystery 
and  its  charm.  But  both  sections  fully  agree  that 
the  broadest  possible  education  must  be  given  to 
every  woman,  so  as  to  fit  her  for  contest  with  every 
man. 

3 

So  much,  then,  for  the  mental  revolution  and 
its  eventual  effects  on  the  position  of  women  in 
the  arts,  the  trades,  and  the  schools.  In  the  indus- 
trial section,  especially,  we  have  already  had  an 
indication  of  the  main  line  of  the  Feminist  atti- 
tude, a  claim  to  a  right  to  choose.  This  right  is 
indeed  the  only  one  for  which  the  Feminists  are 
struggling,  and  they  struggle  for  those  obscure 
reasons  which  lie  at  the  root  of  our  wish  to  live 
and  to  perpetuate  the  race.  It  is  no  wonder,  then, 
that  the  Feminists  should  have  designs  upon  the 
most  fundamental  of  human  institutions,  marriage 
and  motherhood. 

In  the  main,  Feminists  are  opposed  to  indissoluble 
Christian  marriage.  Some  satisfaction  has  been 
given  to  them  in  a  great  many  states  by  the  ex- 
tension of  divorce  facilities,  but  they  are  not 
content  with  piecemeal  reform  such  as  has  been 
carried  out  in  the  United  States,  for  they  realize 

73 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


quite  well  that  divorce  cuts  both  ways,  and  that 
it  is  not  satisfactory  for  a  wife  to  be  married  in  one 
state,  and  divorced  under  a  slack  law  in  another. 
Indeed  I  believe  that  one  of  the  first  Feminist  de- 
mands in  America  would  be  for  a  federal  marriage 
law. 

But  alterations  in  the  law  are  minor  points  by 
the  side  of  the  emotional  revolution  that  is  to  be 
engineered.  Roughly  speaking,  we  have  to-day 
reasonable  men  and  instinctive  women.  Such 
notably  was  Ibsen's  view:  "Woman  cannot  es- 
cape her  primitive  emotions."  But  he  thought 
she  should  control  these  inevitables  so  far  as  pos- 
sible:  "As  soon  as  woman  no  longer  dominates 
her  passions,  she  fails  to  achieve  her  objects."  * 
The  distinction  between  reason  and  instinct,  how- 
ever, is  not  so  wide  as  it  seems;  for  reason  is 
merely  the  conscious  use  of  observation,  while 
instinct  is  the  unconscious  use  of  the  same  faculty ; 
but  as  the  trend  of  Feminism  is  to  make  woman 
self-conscious  and  sex-conscious,  the  Feminists  can 
be  said  broadly  to  be  warring  against  instinct,  and 
on  the  side  of  reason.  They  look  upon  instinct  as 
indicative  of  a  low  mentality.     For  instance,  the 

1  La  Femme  dans  le  Thedtre  d' Ibsen,  by  Friedericke  Boet- 
tcher.  —  The  Author. 


74 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


horse  is  less  instinctive  than  the  zebra,  and  a 
curious  instance  of  this  was  yielded  by  certain 
horses  in  the  South  African  war,  which  were  un- 
able to  crop  the  grass  because  they  had  always 
eaten  from  mangers.  Civilization,  we  may  say, 
had  caused  the  horses  to  degenerate,  but  nobody 
will  contend  that  the  horse  is  not  more  intelligent 
than  the  zebra,  more  capable  of  love,  even  of 
thought.  Briefly,  the  horse  approximates  more 
closely  to  a  reasonable  being  than  does  the  in- 
stinctive wild  beast. 

The  Feminists  therefore  propose,  by  training 
woman's  reason,  to  place  her  beyond  the  scope  of 
mere  emotion  and  mere  prejudice,  to  enable  her  to 
judge,  to  select  a  mate  for  herself  and  a  father  for 
her  children,  —  a  double  and  necessary  process. 

There  is  a  flavor  of  eugenics  about  these  ideas : 
the  right  to  choose  means  that  women  wish  to  be 
placed  in  such  a  position  that,  being  economically 
independent  to  the  extent  of  having  equal  oppor- 
tunities, they  will  not  be  compelled  to  sell  them- 
selves in  marriage  as  they  now  very  often  do.  I 
do  not  refer  to  entirely  loveless  marriages,  for 
these  are  not  very  common  in  Anglo-Saxon  states, 
but  to  marriages  dictated  by  the  desire  of  woman 
to  escape  the  authority  of  her  parents,  and  to  gain 

75 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


the  dignity  of  a  wife,  the  possession  of  a  home  and 
of  money  to  spend.  In  the  Feminist  view,  these 
are  bad  unions  because  love  does  not  play  the 
major  part  in  them,  and  often  plays  hardly  any 
part  at  all.  The  Feminists  believe  that  the  edu- 
cated woman,  informed  on  the  subject  of  sex- 
relations,  able  to  earn  her  own  living,  to  maintain 
a  political  argument,  will  not  fall  an  easy  prey  to 
the  offer  held  out  to  her  by  a  man  who  will  be  her 
master,  because  he  will  have  bought  her  on  a  truck 
system. 

Under  Feminist  rule,  women  will  be  able  to 
select,  because  they  will  be  able  to  sweep  out  of 
their  minds  the  monetary  consideration;  there- 
fore they  will  love  better,  and  unless  they  love, 
they  will  not  marry  at  all.  It  is  therefore  probable 
that  they  will  raise  the  standard  of  masculine  at- 
tractiveness by  demanding  physical  and  mental 
beauty  in  those  whom  they  choose ;  that  they  will 
apply  personal  eugenics.  The  men  whom  they  do 
not  choose  will  find  themselves  in  exactly  the  same 
position  as  the  old  maids  of  modern  times :  that 
is  to  say,  these  men,  if  they  are  unwed,  will  be 
unwed  because  they  have  chosen  to  remain  so,  or 
because  they  were  not  sought  in  marriage.  The 
eugenic  characteristic  appears,  in  that  women  will 

76 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


no  longer  consent  to  accept  as  husbands  the  old, 
the  vicious,  the  unpleasant.  They  will  tend  to 
choose  the  finest  of  the  species,  and  those  likely 
to  improve  the  race.  As  the  Feminist  revolution 
implies  a  social  revolution,  notably  "  proper  work 
for  proper  pay",  it  follows  that  marriage  will  be 
easy,  and  that  those  women  who  wish  to  mate  will 
not  be  compelled  to  wait  indefinitely  for  the  con- 
summation of  their  loves.  Incidentally,  also,  the 
Feminists  point  out  that  their  proposals  hold  forth 
to  men  a  far  greater  chance  of  happiness  than  they 
have  had  hitherto,  for  they  will  be  sure  that  the 
women  who  select  them  do  so  because  they  love 
them,  and  not  because  they  need  to  be  supported. 

This  does  not  mean  that  Feminism  is  entirely  a 
creed  of  reason;  indeed  a  number  of  militant 
Feminists  who  collected  round  the  English  paper, 
The  Freewoman,  have  as  an  article  of  their  faith 
that  one  of  the  chief  natural  needs  of  woman  and 
society  is  not  less  passion,  but  more.  If  they  wish 
to  raise  women's  wages,  to  give  them  security, 
education,  opportunity,  it  is  because  they  want 
to  place  them  beyond  material  temptations,  to 
make  them  independent  of  a  protector,  so  that 
nothing  may  stand  in  the  way  of  the  passionate 
development  of  their  faculties.     To  this  effect,  of 

77 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


course,  they  propose  to  introduce  profound  changes 
in  the  conception  of  marriage  itself. 

Without  committing  themselves  to  free  union, 
the  Feminists  wish  to  loosen  the  marriage  tie,  and 
they  might  not  be  averse  to  making  marriage  less 
easy,  to  raising,  for  instance,  the  marriage  age  for 
both  sexes;  but  as  they  are  well  aware  that,  in 
the  present  state  of  human  passions,  impediments 
to  marriage  would  lead  merely  to  an  increase  in 
irregular  alliances,  they  lay  no  stress  upon  that 
point.  Moreover,  as  they  are  not  prepared  to 
admit  that  any  moral  damage  ensues  when  woman 
contracts  more  than  one  alliance  in  the  course  of 
her  life,  —  which  view  is  accepted  very  largely  in 
the  United  States,  and  in  all  countries  with  regard 
to  widows',  —  they  incline  rather  to  repair  the 
effects  of  bad  marriages,  than  to  prevent  their 
occurrence. 

Plainly  speaking,  the  Feminists  desire  simpler 
divorce.  They  are  to  a  certain  extent  ready  to 
surround  divorce  with  safeguards,  so  as  to  prevent 
the  young  from  rushing  into  matrimony;  indeed 
they  might  "steep  up"  the  law  of  the  " Divorce 
States."  On  the  other  hand,  they  would  introduce 
new  causes  for  divorce  where  they  do  not  already 
exist,  and  they  would  make  them  the  same  for 

78 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


women  and  men.  For  instance,  in  Great  Britain 
a  divorce  can  be  granted  to  a  man  on  account  of 
the  infidelity  of  his  wife,  while  it  can  be  granted  to 
a  woman  only  if  to  infidelity  the  husband  adds 
cruelty  or  desertion.  Such  a  difference  the  Femi- 
nists would  sweep  away,  and  they  would  probably 
add  to  the  existing  causes  certain  others,  such  as 
infectious  and  incurable  diseases,  chronic  drunken- 
ness, insanity,  habitual  cruelty,  and  lengthy  de- 
sertion. It  should  be  observed  that  the  campaign 
is  thus  as  favorable  to  men  as  it  is  to  women,  for 
many  men  who  have  now  no  relief  would  gain  it 
under  the  new  laws.  As  Feminism  is  international, 
the  programme  of  course  includes  the  introduction 
of  divorce  where  it  does  not  exist,  —  in  Austria, 
Spain,  South  American  states,  and  so  forth. 

What  exact  form  the  new  divorce  laws  would 
take,  I  cannot  at  present  say,  for  Feminism  is  as 
evolutionary  as  it  is  revolutionary,  and  Feminists 
are  prepared  to  accept  transitory  measures  of  re- 
form. Thus,  in  the  existing  circumstances,  they 
would  accept  a  partial  extension  of  divorce  facili- 
ties, subject  to  an  adequate  provision  for  all  chil- 
dren. In  the  ultimate  condition,  to  which  I  refer 
later  on,  this  might  not  be  necessary,  but  as  a 
temporary  expedient,  Feminists  desire  to  protect 

79 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


woman  while  she  is  developing  from  the  chattel 
condition  to  the  free-woman  condition.  Until  she 
is  fit  for  her  new  liberty,  it  is  necessary  that  she 
should  be  enabled  to  use  this  liberty  without 
paying  too  heavy  a  price  therefor.  Indeed  this 
clash  between  the  transitory  and  the  ultimate  is 
one  of  the  difficulties  of  Feminism.  The  rebels 
must  accept  situations  such  as  the  financial  re- 
sponsibility of  man,  while  they  struggle  to  make 
woman  financially  independent  of  man,  and  it  is 
for  this  reason  that  different  proposals  appear  in 
the  works  of  Ellen  Key,  Rosa  Mayreder,  Charlotte 
Gilman,  Olive  Schreiner,  and  others,  but  these 
divergences  need  not  trouble  us,  for  Feminism  is 
an  inspiration  rather  than  a  gospel,  and  if  it  lays 
down  a  programme,  it  is  a  temporary  programme. 
Personally,  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  the 
ultimate  aim  of  Feminism  with  regard  to  marriage 
is  the  practical  suppression  of  marriage  and  the 
institution  of  free  alliance.  It  may  be  that  thus 
only  can  woman  develop  her  own  personality,  but 
society  itself  must  so  greatly  alter,  do  so  very  much 
more  than  equalize  wages  and  provide  work  for  all, 
that  these  ultimate  ends  seem  very  distant.  They 
lie  beyond  the  decease  of  Capitalism  itself,  for  they 
imply  a  change  in  the  nature  of  the  human  being 

80 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


which  is  not  impossible  when  we  consider  that 
man  has  changed  a  great  deal  since  the  Stone  Age, 
but  is  still  inconceivably  radical. 

Ultimate  ends  of  Feminism  will  be  attained 
only  when  socialization  shall  have  been  so  com- 
plete that  the  human  being  will  no  longer  require 
the  law,  but  will  be  able  to  obey  some  obscure  but 
noble  categorical  imperative;  when  men  and 
women  can  associate  voluntarily,  without  thrall  of 
the  State,  for  the  production  and  enjoyment  of 
the  goods  of  life.  How  this  will  be  achieved,  by 
what  propaganda,  by  what  struggles  and  by  what 
battles,  is  difficult  to  say;  but  in  common  with 
many  Feminists  I  incline  to  place  a  good  deal  of 
reliance  on  the  ennobling  of  the  nature  of  the  male. 
That  there  is  a  sex  war,  and  will  be  a  sex  war,  I  do 
not  deny,  but  the  entry  of  women  into  the  modern 
world  of  art  and  business  shows  that  an  immense 
enlightenment  has  come  over  the  male,  that  he  no 
longer  wishes  to  crush  as  much  as  he  did,  and  there- 
fore that  he  is  loving  better  and  more  sanely. 
Therein  lies  a  profound  lesson  :  if  men  do  not  make 
war  upon  women,  women  will  not  make  war  upon 
men.  I  have  spoken  of  sex  war,  but  it  takes  two 
sides  to  make  a  war,  and  I  do  not  see  that  in  the 
event  of  conflict  the  Feminists  can  alone  be  guilty. 

81 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


One  feature  manifests  itself,  and  that  is  a  change 
of  attitude  in  woman  with  regard  to  the  child.  In- 
dications in  modern  novels  and  modern  conversa- 
tion are  not  wanting  to  show  that  a  type  of  woman 
is  arising  who  believes  in  a  new  kind  of  matriarchate, 
that  is  to  say,  in  a  state  of  society  where  man  will 
not  figure  in  the  life  of  woman  except  as  the  father 
of  her  child.  Two  cases  have  come  to  my  knowl- 
edge where  English  women  have  been  prepared  to 
contract  alliances  with  men  with  whom  they  did 
not  intend  to  pass  their  lives,  —  this  because  they 
desired  a  child.  They  consider  that  the  child  is 
the  expression  of  the  feminine  personality,  while 
after  the  child's  birth,  the  husband  becomes  a 
mere  excrescence.  They  believe  that  the  "Wife" 
should  die  in  childbirth,  and  the  "Mother"  rise 
from  her  ashes.  There  is  nothing  Utopian  about 
this  point  of  view,  if  we  agree  that  Feminists  can 
so  rearrange  society  as  to  provide  every  woman 
with  an  independent  living ;  and  I  do  not  say  that 
th;'s  is  the  prevalent  view.  It  is  merely  one  view, 
and  I  do  not  believe  it  will  be  carried  to  the  ex- 
treme, for  the  association  of  human  beings  in 
couples  appears  to  respond  to  some  deep  need ; 
still,  it  should  be  taken  into  account  as  an  indica- 
tion of  sex  revolt. 

82 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


That  part  of  the  programme  belongs  to  the  ulti- 
mates.  Among  the  transitory  ideas,  that  is,  the 
ideas  which  are  to  fit  Feminism  into  the  modern 
State,  are  the  endowment  of  motherhood  and  the 
lien  on  wages.  The  Feminists  do  not  commit 
themselves  to  a  view  on  the  broad  social  question 
whether  it  is  desirable  to  encourage  or  discourage 
births.  Taking  births  as  they  happen,  they  lay 
down  that  a  woman  being  incapacitated  from  work 
for  a  period  of  weeks  or  months  while  she  is  giving 
birth  to  a  child,  her  liberty  can  be  secured  only  if 
the  fact  of  the  birth  gives  her  a  call  upon  the  State. 
Failing  this,  she  must  have  a  male  protector  in 
whose  favor  she  must  abdicate  her  rights  because 
he  is  her  protector.  As  man  is  not  handicapped  in 
his  work  by  becoming  a  father,  they  propose  to 
remove  the  disability  that  lies  upon  woman  by 
supplying  her  with  the  means  of  livelihood  for  a 
period  surrounding  the  birth,  of  not  less  than  six 
weeks,  which  some  place  at  three  months.  There 
is  nothing  wild  in  this  scheme,  for  the  British 
Insurance  Act  (191 2)  gives  a  maternity  endowment 
of  seven  dollars  and  fifty  cents  whether  a  mother 
be  married  or  single.  The  justice  of  the  proposal 
may  be  doubted  by  some,  but  I  do  not  think  its 
expediency  will  be  questioned.     On  mere  grounds 

83 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


of  humanity,  it  is  barbarous  to  compel  a  woman 
to  labor  while  she  is  with  child ;  on  social  grounds 
it  is  not  advantageous  for  the  race  to  allow  her  to 
do  so :  premature  births,  child-murder,  child- 
neglect  by  working  mothers,  all  these  facts  point 
to  the  social  value  of  the  endowment. 

4 
The  last  of  the  transitory  measures  is  the  lien 
on  wages.  In  the  present  state  of  things,  women 
who  work  in  the  home  depend  for  money  on  hus- 
bands or  fathers.  The  fact  of  having  to  ask  is, 
in  the  Feminists'  view,  a  degradation.  They  sug- 
gest that  the  housekeeper  should  be  entitled  to  a 
proportion  of  the  man's  income  or  salary,  and  one 
of  them,  Mrs.  M.  H.  Wood,  picturesquely  illus- 
trates her  case  by  saying  that  she  hopes  to  do  away 
with  "pocket-searching"  while  the  man  is  asleep. 
Mrs.  Wood's  ideas  certainly  deserve  sympathy; 
though  many  men  pay  their  wives  a  great  deal 
more  than  they  are  worth  and  are  shamefully  ex- 
ploited —  a  common  modern  position  —  it  is  also 
quite  true  that  many  others  expect  their  wives  to 
run  their  household  on  inadequate  allowances, 
and  to  come  to  them  for  clothes  or  pleasure  in  a 
manner  which  establishes  the  man  as  a  pasha. 

84 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


When  women  have  grown  economically  independ- 
ent, no  lien  on  wages  will  be  required,  but  mean- 
while it  is  interesting  to  observe  that  there  has 
recently  been  formed  in  England  a  society  called 
"The  Home-makers'  Trade  Union",  one  of  whose 
specific  objects  is,  "To  insist  as  a  right  on  a  proper 
proportion  of  men's  earnings  being  paid  to  wives 
for  the  support  of  the  home." 

Generally  speaking,  then,  it  is  clear  that  women 
are  greatly  concerned  with  the  race,  for  all  these 
demands  —  support  of  the  mother,  support  of  the 
child,  rights  of  the  household  —  are  definitely 
directed  toward  the  benevolent  control  by  the 
woman  of  her  home  and  her  child.  I  have  alluded 
above  to  these  Feminist  intentions :  they  affect 
the  immediate  conditions  as  well  as  the  ultimate. 

Among  the  ultimates  is  a  logical  consequence  of 
the  right  of  woman  to  be  represented  by  women. 
So  long  as  Parliamentary  Government  endures,  or 
any  form  of  authority  endures,  the  Feminists  will 
demand  a  share  in  this  authority.  It  has  been  the 
custom  during  the  Suffrage  campaign  to  pretend 
that  women  demand  merely  the  vote.  The  object 
of  this  is  to  avoid  frightening  the  men,  and  it  may 
well  be  that  a  number  of  Suffragists  honestly  be- 
lieve that  they  are  asking  for  no  more  than  the 

85 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


vote,  while  a  few,  who  confess  that  they  want 
more,  add  that  it  is  not  advisable  to  say  so ;  they 
are  afraid  to  "let  the  cat  out  of  the  bag",  but 
they  will  not  rest  until  all  Parliaments,  all  Cabinets, 
all  Boards  are  open  to  women,  until  the  Presidential 
chair  is  as  accessible  to  them  as  is  the  English 
throne.  Already  in  Norway  women  have  entered 
the  National  Assembly :  they  propose  to  do  so 
everywhere.  They  will  not  hesitate  to  claim 
women's  votes  for  women  candidates  until  they 
have  secured  the  representation  which  they  think 
is  their  right,  that  is,  one  half. 

These  are  the  bases,  roughly  outlined,  on  which 
can  be  established  a  lasting  peace. 

5 
I  do  not  want  to  exaggerate  the  difficulties  and 
perils  which  are  bound  up  in  this  revolutionary 
movement,  but  it  is  abundantly  clear  that  it  pre- 
supposes profound  changes  in  the  nature  of  women 
and  of  men.  While  man  will  be  asked  for  more 
liberalism  and  be  expected  to  develop  his  sense  of 
justice  (which  has  too  long  lain  at  the  mercy  of  his 
erratic  and  sentimental  generosity),  woman  will 
have  to  modify  her  outlook.  She  is  now  too  often 
vain,   untruthful,   disloyal,   avaricious,   vampiric; 

86 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


briefly  she  has  the  characteristics  of  the  slave. 
She  will  have  to  slough  off  these  characteristics 
while  she  is  becoming  free,  she  will  have  to  justify 
by  her  mental  ascent  the  increase  in  her  power. 
Feminists  are  not  blind  to  this,  and  that  is  why 
they  lay  such  stress  upon  education  and  propa- 
ganda. 

One  of  the  most  profound  changes  will,  I  think, 
appear  in  sex  relations.  The  "New  Woman",  as 
we  know  her  to-day,  a  woman  who  is  not  so  new 
as  the  woman  who  will  be  born  of  her,  is  a  very 
unpleasant  product;  armed  with  a  little  knowl- 
edge, she  tends  to  be  dogmatic  in  her  views  and 
offensive  in  argument.  She  tends  to  hate  men, 
and  to  look  upon  Feminism  as  a  revenge;  she 
adopts  mannish  ways,  tends  to  shout,  to  contra- 
dict, to  flout  principles  because  they  are  principles ; 
also  she  affects  a  contempt  for  marriage  which  is 
the  natural  result  of  her  hatred  of  man.  The  New 
Woman  has  not  the  support  of  the  saner  Feminists. 
Says  Ellen  Key,  in  The  Woman  Movement,  "These 
cerebral,  amaternal  women  must  obviously  be  ac- 
corded the  freedom  of  finding  the  domestic  life, 
with  its  limited  but  intensive  exercise  of  power, 
meagre  beside  the  feeling  of  power  which  they 
enjoy   as    public    personalities,    as    consummate 

87 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


women  of  the  world,  as  talented  professionals.  But 
they  have  not  the  right  to  falsify  life  values  in 
their  own  favor  so  that  they  themselves  shall 
represent  the  highest  form  of  life,  the  'human 
personality',  in  comparison  with  which  the  ' in- 
stinctive feminine'  signifies  a  lower  stage  of  de- 
velopment, a  poorer  type  of  life."  If  this  were  the 
ultimate  type,  very  few  men  would  be  found  in  the 
Feminist  camp,  for  the  coming  of  the  New  Woman 
would  mean  the  death  of  love.  If  the  death  of 
love  had  to  be  the  price  of  woman's  emancipation, 
I,  for  one,  would  support  the  institution  of  the 
zenana  and  the  repression  of  woman  by  brute 
force ;  but  I  do  not  think  we  need  be  anxious. 

If  the  New  Woman  is  so  aggressive,  it  is  because 
she  must  be  aggressive  if  she  is  to  win  her  battle. 
We  cannot  expect  people  who  are  laboring  under  a 
sense  of  intolerable  injury  to  set  politely  about 
the  righting  of  that  injury :  when  woman  has 
entered  her  kingdom  she  will  no  longer  have  to 
resort  to  political  nagging;  her  true  nature  will 
affirm  itself  for  the  first  time,  for  it  is  difficult  to 
believe  that  it  has  been  able  to  affirm  itself  under 
the  entirely  artificial  conditions  of  androcracy. 
Already  some  women  to  whom  a  profession  or 
mental  eminence  has  given  exceptional  freedom 

88 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


show  us  in  society  that  women  can  be  free  and 
yet  be  sweet.  Indeed  they  almost  demonstrate 
the  Feminist  contention  that  women  must  be  free 
before  they  are  sweet,  for  are  not  these  women  — 
of  whom  all  of  us  can  name  a  few  —  the  noblest 
and  most  desirable  of  their  kind?  The  New 
Woman  is  like  a  freshly  painted  railing :  whoever 
touches  it  will  stain  his  hands,  but  the  railing  will 
dry  in  time. 

There  is  one  type  of  woman,  however,  whom  I 
venture  to  call  "Old  Woman",  who  is  probably  a 
bitterer  foe  of  Feminism  than  any  man,  and  that 
is  the  super-feminine  type,  the  woman  for  whom 
nothing  exists  except  her  sex,  who  has  no  interests 
except  the  decking  of  her  body  and  the  quest  of 
men.  This  woman,  who  once  dominated  her  own 
species,  still  represents  the  majority  of  her  sex. 
It  is  still  true  that  the  majority  of  women  are 
concerned  with  little  save  the  fashions,  novels, 
plays,  and  vaudeville  turns.  These  women  want 
to  have  "a  good  time"  and  want  nothing  more; 
they  are  ready  to  prey  upon  men  by  flattering 
them ;  they  encourage  their  own  weakness,  which 
they  call  "charm",  and  generally  aim  at  being 
pampered  slaves,  because,  from  their  point  of 
view,  it  pays  better  than  being  working  partners. 

89 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


Evidence  of  this  is  to  be  found  in  women's  shops, 
in  the  continual  change  in  fashions,  each  of  which 
is  a  signal  to  the  male,  and  in  the  continual  in- 
crease in  the  sums  spent  on  adornment :  it  is  not 
uncommon  for  a  rich  woman  to  spend  five  hundred 
dollars  on  a  frock ;  two  hundred  and  fifty  dollars 
has  been  given  for  a  hat ;  and  twenty-five  thousand 
dollars  for  a  set  of  furs. 

As  Miss  Beatrice  Tina  very  well  says,  "Woman 
is  woman's  worst  enemy",  though  she  is  not  re- 
ferring to  this  type.  So  long  as  woman  maintains 
this  attitude,  compels  men  to  forget  her  soul  in 
the  contemplation  of  her  body,  so  long  will  she 
remain  a  slave,  for  this  preoccupation  goes  further 
than  clothes. 

In  a  book  recently  published,1  an  account  is 
given  of  the  late  Empress  of  Austria,  who  was 
evidently  one  of  the  lowest  of  the  slave  type.  It 
is  noteworthy  that  she  had  no  love  for  her  children 
because  their  coming  had  impaired  her  beauty. 
Now  I  do  not  suggest  that  Feminists  are  arrayed 
against  the  care  of  the  body ;  far  from  it,  for  the 
campaign  has  many  associates  among  those  who 
support  physical  culture,  the  fresh-air  movement, 
ancient  costume  revival,  and  the  like ;  but  Femi- 
1  My  Past,  by  Countess  Marie  Larisch. 
QO 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


nists  are  well  aware  that  concentration  on  adorn- 
ment diverts  woman  from  the  development  of  her 
brain  and  her  soul,  and  enhances  in  her  the  char- 
acteristics of  the  harem  favorite.  One  tentative 
suggestion  is  being  made,  and  that  is  a  uniform 
for  women.  The  interested  parties  point  out  that 
men  practically  wear  uniform,  that  there  is  hardly 
any  change  from  year  to  year  in  their  costume,  and 
that  any  undue  adornment  of  the  male  is  looked 
upon  as  bad  form.  Thus,  while  few  men  can 
with  impunity  spend  more  than  five  hundred 
dollars  a  year  on  their  clothes,  many  women  do 
not  consider  themselves  happy  unless  they  can 
dispose  of  anything  between  five  and  twenty  times 
that  amount.  This,  while  involving  the  household 
in  difficulties,  lowers  the  status  of  woman  by  lower- 
ing her  mentality. 

Feminists  do  not  ask  for  sumptuary  laws,  having 
very  little  respect  for  the  law,  but  for  a  new  vision, 
which  is  this  :  Man,  intellectually  developed,  decks 
himself  in  no  finery,  because  it  is  not  essential  to 
his  success;  woman  must  likewise  abandon  frip- 
pery if  she  is  to  have  energy  enough  to  reach  his 
plane.  They  propose  to  attain  their  object  by 
the  force  of  their  example,  and  I  have  received 
several  letters  on  the  subject,  which  show  that 

9i 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


the  idea  of  fixing  the  fashions  is  not  entirely  wild, 
for  fashion  consists  after  all  in  wearing  what  every- 
body wears,  and  if  an  influential  movement  is 
started  to  maintain  the  costume  of  women  on  a 
very  simple  basis,  it  may  very  well  prevail  and 
kill  much  of  their  purely  imitative  vanity  by  show- 
ing them  that  undue  devotion  to  self-adornment 
is  very  much  worse  than  immoral :  in  other  words, 
that  it  is  in  bad  taste. 

Incidentally  the  Feminists  believe  that  the 
downfall  of  many  women  is  procured  by  the  offer 
of  fine  clothes.  They  hope,  therefore,  to  derive 
some  side-profits  from  the  simplification  of 
woman's  dress. 

The  question  also  arises  as  to  whether  woman 
can  become  intellectually  independent,  whether 
she  does  not  naturally  depend  upon  the  opinion  of 
man.  It  is  suggested  that  not  even  rich  women 
are  actually  independent,  that  women  place  mar- 
riage above  their  art,  their  work;  but  I  do  not 
think  this  is  a  very  solid  objection,  for  the  vaunted 
independence  of  men  is  not  so  very  common ;  they 
currently  take  many  of  their  opinions  from  their 
reading  in  newspapers  and  books,  and  must  often 
subordinate  their  views  and  their  conduct  to  the 
will  of  their  employer.    The  main  answer  to  this 

92 


FEMINIST  INTENTIONS 


suggestion  is  that  we  must  not  consider  woman  as 
she  was,  but  woman  "as  she  is  becoming",  as  a 
creature  of  infinite  potentialities,  as  virgin  ground. 
It  may  be  petitio  principii  to  say  that,  as  woman 
has  produced  so  much  that  is  fine,  she  would  have 
produced  very  much  more  if  she  had  not  been 
hampered  by  law  and  custom,  derided  by  the  male, 
but  bad  logic  is  often  good  sense.  This  should 
commend  itself  to  men  who  are  no  longer  willing 
to  support  the  idea  that  women  are  inherently 
inferior  to  them,  but  who  are  willing  to  give  them 
an  opportunity  to  develop  in  every  field  of  human 
activity.  Thus  and  thus  only,  if  man  will  readjust 
his  views,  expel  vir  and  enthrone  homo,  can  woman 
cease  to  appear  before  him  as  a  rival  and  a  foe, 
realize  herself  in  her  natural  and  predestined  role, 
that  of  partner  and  mate.1 

1  Note:  This  chapter  should  be  taken  as  the  summary  of  an 
intellectual  position.  Its  points  are  considered  in  detail  in  the 
four  chapters  that  follow. 


93 


Ill 

UNIFORMS  FOR  WOMEN 


The  change  which  has  come  over  politics  re- 
flects closely  enough  the  change  which  has  come 
about  in  the  direction  of  man's  desire.  In  times 
of  peace,  diplomacy  and  the  affairs  of  kings  have 
given  place  to  wages  and  the  housing  of  the  poor ; 
that  which  was  serious  has  become  pompous ;  that 
which  was  of  no  account  now  stands  in  the  fore- 
ground. And  so  it  is  not  absurd  to  suggest  that 
one  of  those  things  which  once  made  jests  for  the 
comic  paper  and  the  Victorian  paterfamilias  has, 
little  by  little,  with  the  spread  of  wealth,  become 
a  problem  of  the  day,  a  problem  profound  and 
menacing,  full  of  intimations  of  social  decay,  not 
far  remote  in  its  reactions  from  the  spread  of  a 
disease. 

That  problem  is  the  problem  of  women's  dress, 
or  rather  it  is   the  problem   of   the   fashions   in 

94 


UNIFORMS  FOR  WOMEN 


women's  dress.  Women  have  never  been  content 
merely  to  clothe  themselves,  nor,  for  the  matter  of 
that,  until  very  recently,  have  men ;  but  men  have 
grown  a  new  sanity,  while  women,  if  we  read 
aright  the  signs  of  the  times,  have  grown  naught 
save  a  new  insanity.  We  have  come  to  a  point 
where,  for  a  great  number  of  women,  the  fashions 
have  become  the  motive  power  of  life,  and  where, 
for  almost  every  woman,  they  have  acquired  great 
importance.  Women  classify  each  other  accord- 
ing to  their  clothes ;  they  have  corrupted  the  drama 
into  a  showroom ;  they  have  completely  ruined  the 
more  expensive  parts  of  the  opera  house;  they 
have  invaded  the  newspapers  in  myriad  para- 
graphs, in  fashion-pages,  and  do  not  spare  even 
the  august  columns  of  the  most  dignified  papers. 
This  preoccupation  does  not  exist  among  men. 
We  have  had  our  dandies  and  we  still  have  our 
"nuts"  and  dudes;  but  it  never  served  a  man 
very  well  to  be  a  dandy  or  a  beau,  and  most  of 
us  to-day  suspect  that  if  the  "nut"  were  broken, 
he  would  be  found  to  contain  no  kernel. 

Men  have  escaped  the  fashions  and  therewith 
they  have  spared  themselves  much  loss  of  energy 
and  money.  For  it  is  not  only  the  fashions  that 
matter:    it  is   the  cost  of   women's  clothes,  the 

95 


UNIFORMS  FOR  WOMEN 


intrinsic  cost ;  it  is  their  continual  changes  for  no 
reason,  changes  which  sometimes  produce,  and 
sometimes  destroy,  beauty;  sometimes  promote 
comfort,  and  often  cause  torture.  But  always 
by  their  drafts  upon  its  wealth,  women  lead  hu- 
manity nearer  to  poverty,  envy,  discontent,  frivol- 
ity, starvation,  prostitution,  —  to  general  social 
degradation.  Nothing  can  mitigate  these  evils 
until  woman  is  induced  to  view  clothing  as  does 
the  modern  man,  until,  namely,  she  decides  to 
wear  a  uniform. 


The  costliness  of  women's  clothes  would  not  be 
so  serious  if  the  fashions  did  not  change  at  so  be- 
wildering a  speed.  We  have  come  to  a  point 
where  women  have  not  time  to  wear  out  their 
clothes,  flimsy  though  they  be;  where  we  ought 
to  welcome  the  adulteration  of  silk  and  wool; 
where  we  ought  to  hope  that  every  material  may 
get  shoddier  and  more  worthless,  so  that  the 
new  model  may  have  a  chance  to  justify  its  short 
life  by  the  badness  of  the  stuff.  To-day  women 
will  quite  openly  say,  "I  won't  buy  that.  I 
couldn't  wear  it  out."  They  actually  want  to 
wear  out  their  clothes!    The  causes  of  this  are 

96 


UNIFORMS  FOR  WOMEN 


obvious  enough.  We  are  told  that  there  are 
" rings"  in  Paris,  London,  and  Vienna  which  de- 
cree every  few  months  that  the  clothes  of  yester- 
day have  become  a  social  stigma;  this  is  true, 
but  much  truer  is  the  view  that  women  are  in  the 
grasp  of  a  new  hysteria;  that,  lacking  the  old 
occupations  of  brewing,  baking,  child-rearing,  spin- 
ning, they  are  desperately  looking  for  something 
to  do.  They  have  found  it :  they  are  undoing  the 
social  system. 

It  was  not  always  so.  It  is  true  that  all  through 
history,  even  in  biblical  times,  moralists  and 
preachers  inveighed  against  the  gewgaws  that 
woman  loves.  They  cried  out  before  they  were 
hurt ;  if  he  were  alive  to-day,  Bossuet  might,  for 
the  first  time,  fail  to  find  words. 

To  the  old  curse  of  cost  we  have  added  change, 
as  any  student  of  costume  will  confirm ;  for  in 
past  ages  the  clothing  of  women  did  not  change 
very  rapidly.  There  is  hardly  any  difference  be- 
tween the  costume  of  1755  and  that  which  Queen 
Marie  Leszczynska  wore  ten  years  later ;  in  Greece, 
between  B.C.  500  and  400,  the  Ionic  chiton  and 
himation  varied  but  little;  the  Doric  chiton  did 
not  vary  at  all ;  the  variations  in  the  over-mantle 
were  not  considerable.     Any  examination  of  early 

97 


UNIFORMS   FOR  WOMEN 


sculpture,  of  Attic  vases,  or  of  terra  cottas,  will 
show  that  this  is  true.  The  ladies  of  Queen 
Elizabeth's  court,  together  with  their  royal  mis- 
tress, wore  the  same  kind  of  clothes  through  their 
adult  years.  Their  clothes  were  sometimes  costly, 
but  when  bought  they  were  bought,  and  until 
worn  out  were  not  discarded.  And  our  grand- 
mothers had  that  famous  black-silk  dress,  so 
sturdy  that  it  stood  up  by  itself,  very  like  a  Vic- 
torian virtue;  it  lasted  a  lifetime,  sometimes  be- 
came an  heirloom. 

There  was  no  question  then  of  fashion  following 
on  fashion  at  a  whirling  pace.  Women  were 
clothed,  sometimes  beautifully,  sometimes  hid- 
eously, but  at  any  rate  they  scrapped  their  gowns 
only  when  they  were  worn  out;  now  they  scrap 
them  as  soon  as  they  have  been  worn.  The  re- 
sults of  this  I  deal  with  further  on,  but  here  al- 
ready I  can  suggest  these  results  by  quoting  a 
few  facts.  Before  me  lies  one  of  Messrs.  Barker's 
advertisements;  it  seems  that  there  are  reception 
gowns,  restaurant  gowns ;  that  there  are  coats  for 
the  races,  and  coats  for  the  car,  wraps  for  one 
thing,  and  wraps  for  another  —  and  the  advertise- 
ment adds  that  these  are  the  " latest  novelties" 
for  "the  coming  season",  and  that  all  this  is  "for 

98 


UNIFORMS   FOR  WOMEN 


the  spring."  And  then  there  is  an  advertisement 
of  Messrs.  Tudor  Brothers,  who  have  gowns  for 
Ascot,  and  —  this  is  quite  true  —  gowns  for 
Alexandra  Day. 

I  have  looked  in  vain'  for  gowns  for  July  23,  for 
gowns  to  be  worn  between  a  quarter  past  eleven 
and  half-past  twelve  in  the  morning,  and  for 
special  mourning  gowns  for  a  cousin's  stepfather. 
Some  occasions  are  shamefully  disregarded.  They 
are  not  disregarded  by  everybody;  at  least  I 
presume  that  the  lady  quoted  by  Mrs.  Cobden- 
Sanderson  in  her  lecture  in  March,  who  possessed 
one  hundred  and  ten  nightdresses,  could  cope  with 
any  eventuality ;  there  is  also  the  lady,  mentioned 
to  me  by  a  friend  who  made  some  American  in- 
vestigations for  me,  who  possesses  one  hundred 
and  fifty  pairs  of  slippers.  There  is,  too,  the 
Bon  Marche  in  Paris,  where,  out  of  a  staff  of  six 
thousand  to  seven  thousand,  are  employed  fifteen 
hundred  dressmakers,  and  where  there  is  a  special 
workroom  for  the  creation  of  models. 

As  all  these  people  must  find  something  to  do, 
they  create,  unless  they  merely  steal  from  the 
dead ;  but  one  thing  they  always  do,  and  that  is 
destroy  yesterday.  Out  of  their  activities  comes 
a  continual  stream  of  new  colors  and  new  com- 

99 


UNIFORMS   FOR  WOMEN 


binations  of  colors,  of  high  heels  and  low  heels, 
gilt  heels  and  jeweled  heels ;  they  give  us  the  spat 
that  is  to  keep  out  the  wet  and  then  the  spat  that 
does  not  keep  out  the  eye.  Before  me  lies  a  pic- 
ture of  a  spat  made  of  lace;  another  of  a  skirt 
slit  so  high  as  to  reveal  a  jeweled  garter.  That 
is  creation,  and  I  suppose  I  shall  be  told  that  that 
is  art.  It  is  art  sometimes,  and  very  beautiful, 
but  beauty  does  not  make  it  live ;  in  fact  beauty 
causes  the  creation  to  die  more  swiftly,  because 
the  more  appealing  it  is,  the  more  it  is  worn :  as 
soon  as  it  is  worn  by  the  many,  the  furious  craving 
for  distinction  sweeps  down  upon  it  and  slays  it. 
There  are  several  mad  women  in  the  St.  Anne 
asylum  in  Paris  whose  peculiar  disease  is  that 
they  cannot  retain  the  same  idea  for  more  than  a 
few  seconds;  they  ring  the  changes  on  a  few 
hundreds  of  ideas.  Properly  governed,  their  in- 
spirations might  be  valuable  in  Grafton  Street. 

I  do  not  think  the  end  is  near ;  indeed,  fashions 
will  be  more  extreme  to-morrow  than  they  are 
to-day.  The  continual  growth  of  wealth,  and  the 
difficulty  of  spending  it  when  it  clots  in  a  few 
hands,  will  make  for  a  greater  desire  to  spend 
more,  more  quickly,  more  continually,  and  in 
wilder  and  wilder  forms.  The  women  are  to-day 
ioo 


UNIFORMS   FOR  WOMEN 


having  individual  orgies ;  to-morrow  will  come  the 
saturnalia. 


There  is  a  clear  difference  between  the  cost  of 
women's  clothes  and  of  men's.  It  is  absolutely 
impossible  to  dress  a  woman  of  the  comfortable 
classes  for  the  same  amount  per  annum  that  will 
serve  her  husband  well.  I  must  quote  a  few 
figures  taken  from  Boston,  New  York,  and  London. 

Boston.  —  Persons  considered :  those  having 
$4500  to  $7500  a  year. 

Average  price  of  a  suit  (coat  and  skirt),  $40 
ready  to  wear;  made  by  a  dressmaker  of  slight 
pretensions,  $125  to  $225. 

Afternoon  dresses,  ready  to  wear,  $125  to  $225. 

Evening  dresses,  absolute  minimum,  $50 ;  fash- 
ionable frocks,  $200  to  $350. 

On  an  income  of  $7500  a  woman's  hat  will  cost 
$25  ;  variation,  $20  to  $45  ;  hats  easily  attain  $125. 

Veils  attain  $5.  Opera  cloaks  in  stores,  $90  to 
$250.     Dressmakers  charge  $450  to  $600. 

New  York.  —  Winter  street  dress,  $225. 

Skunk  muff  and  stole,  $200. 

Hats  for  the  year,  at  least  $250  to  $300. 

Footwear,  $250  per  annum. 
101 


UNIFORMS  FOR  WOMEN 


I  am  informed  that  a  lady  in  active  society  can 
"manage  with  care"  on  $2500,  but  really  needs 
$4500  to  $5000. 

A  "moderate"  wardrobe  allows  for  "extremely 
simple"  gowns  costing  $125  each;  the  lady  in 
question  requires  at  least  six  new  evening  dresses 
and  six  remodeled,  per  annum.  She  wore  an 
average  set  of  furs,  price  $1500. 

London.  —  Debenham  &  Freebody  blouse,  $10. 

Ponting's  Leghorn  hat,  $8.  Gorringe  straws, 
$12  to  $14. 

I  am  informed  that  where  the  household  income 
is  $3500  to  $7500  a  year  the  ordinary  prices  are  as 
follows : 

Coats  and  skirts,  $50  to  $75. 

Evening  dresses,  $75  to  $120. 

Hats,  $7.50  to  $20. 

Silk  stockings  are  cheap  at  $1.50,  and  veils  at 

$1.50. 

Now  these  are  all  moderate  figures  and  will 
shock  nobody,  but  if  they  are  compared  with  the 
prices  paid  by  men,  they  are,  without  any  ques- 
tion of  fashion,  outrageous.  I  believe  they  are 
high  because  it  is  men  and  not  women  who  pay, 
because  the  dressmaker  trades  on  man's  sex- 
enslavement.    But  I  am  concerned  just  now  less 

102 


UNIFORMS  FOR  WOMEN 


with  causes  than  with  facts,  and  would  rather 
ask  how  the  modest  $100  evening  gown  compares 
with  the  man's  $63  dress  suit  (by  a  good  tailor). 
How  does  the  $63  coat  and  skirt  compare  with  a 
man's  lounge  suit,  price  $36  by  anybody  save 
Poole,  and  by  him  only  $52.50?  No  man  has,  I 
believe,  paid  more  than  $9  for  a  silk  hat,  while 
his  wife  pays  at  least  $20.  The  point  is  not  worth 
laboring,  it  is  obvious;  while  every  man  knows 
that  a  "good  cut"  does  not  account  for  the  dis- 
crepancy, as  he  too  pays,  but  pays  moderately, 
for  the  art  of  a  good  tailor.  And,  mark  you,  apart 
from  cost,  men's  clothes  last  indefinitely,  while 
women's,  if  they  have  the  misfortune  to  last, 
must  be  given  away. 

The  prices  I  have  quoted  are  moderate  prices, 
and  I  cannot  resist  the  temptation  to  give  some 
others  which  are  not  unusual.  I  am  informed 
that  $400  can  easily  be  charged  for  an  afternoon 
dress,  $1000  for  an  evening  dress,  $200  for  a  coat 
and  skirt ;  that  it  is  quite  easy  to  spend  $5000  a 
year  on  underclothes  and  $250  on  an  aigrette.  I 
observe  a  Maison  Lewis  Ascot  hat,  price  $477. 
Yantorny  will  not  make  a  shoe  under  $60;  a 
pair  of  his  shoes  made  of  feathers  is  priced  by  him 
at  $2400. 

103 


UNIFORMS   FOR  WOMEN 


As  for  totals :  I  have  private  information  of  an 
expenditure  of  $30,000  a  year  on  dress;  one  of 
$70,000  is  reported  to  me  from  America.  I  have 
seen  a  bill  for  dress  and  lingerie  alone,  incurred  at 
one  shop,  for  $35,000  in  twelve  months. 

4 

It  might  be  thought  that  this  ghastly  picture 
speaks  for  itself,  but  evidently  it  does  not,  as 
hardly  anybody  takes  any  notice  of  the  question. 
I  will  venture  to  draw  attention  to  the  results  of 
what  is  happening,  ignoring  the  abnormal  figures, 
because  I  wish  to  reason  from  what  happens  all 
the  time  rather  than  from  what  happens  now 
and  then,  to  figure  the  position  in  which  the  world 
finds  itself  because  women  do  not  hesitate  to  spend 
upon  their  clothes  a  full  ten  per  cent  of  the  house- 
hold income.  This  figure  is  correct :  such  inquiries 
as  I  have  been  able  to  make  among  women  of  my 
acquaintance  prove  it.  Out  of  a  joint  income  of 
$12,500  a  year  one  woman  spends  $1350  a  year 
on  clothes;  another,  out  of  $5750  a  year,  last 
year  $655 ;  a  third,  out  of  $8000  a  year  $700,  but 
she  is  a  "dowdy." 

In  households  of  moderate  means,  where  a  cer- 
tain social  status  is  kept  up,  where,  for  instance, 
104 


UNIFORMS   FOR  WOMEN 


a  woman  takes  $500  a  year  out  of  $5000,  while 
her  husband  dresses  well  on  $200,  when  all  ex- 
penses have  been  paid,  there  is  money  for  little 
else;  fixed  charges,  children,  service,  taxes,  swal- 
low up  the  rest.  There  is  hardly  anything  left 
for  books,  barely  for  a  circulating  library;  there 
is  very  little  for  the  theater  and  for  games ;  holi- 
days are  taken  in  hideous  lodgings  at  the  seaside 
because  a  comfortable  bungalow  costs  too  much. 
The  money  that  should  have  provided  the  most 
important  thing  in  human  life,  namely  pleasure, 
is  on  the  woman's  back. 

In  the  lower  classes  the  case  is,  in  a  way,  still 
worse.  I  do  not  mean  workmen's  wives,  for  any 
old  rag  will  serve  the  slaves,  —  but  their  daughters ! 
Recently  a  coroner's  inquest  in  Soho  showed  that 
a  girl  had  practically  starved  herself  to  death  to 
buy  fine  clothes,  and  it  is  not  an  isolated  case. 
For  the  last  eight  years  I  have  been  investigating 
the  condition  of  workwomen,  and,  so  far  as  typists, 
manicurists,  and  tea-shop  girls  are  concerned,  I 
assert  that  their  main  object  in  leaving  the  homes 
where  they  are  kept  is  to  have  money  for  smart 
clothes;  they  flood  the  labor  market  at  blackleg 
prices,  to  buy  finery  and  for  no  other  reason. 
They  go  further:   while  making  the  necessary  in- 

105 


UNIFORMS  FOR  WOMEN 


quiries  for  my  novel,  A  Bed  of  Roses,  I  scheduled 
the  cases  of  about  forty  London  prostitutes.  In 
about  twenty -five  per  cent  of  the  cases  the  original 
cause,  direct  or  contributory,  was  a  desire  for 
luxury  which  took  the  form  of  fine  clothes.  Now 
these  women  tell  one  what  they  think  one  would 
like  to  hear,  and,  where  they  scent  sympathy,  as 
much  as  possible  attribute  their  fall  to  man's  deceit. 
But  acumen  develops  in  the  investigator;  the 
figure  of  twenty-five  per  cent  is  correct  or  may 
even  be  an  underestimate. 

The  conclusion  is  that  from  fifteen  thousand  to 
twenty-five  thousand  women  now  on  the  streets 
of  London  have  been  brought  there  by  a  desire 
for  self-adornment.  Meanwhile  there  is  no  labor 
available  for  the  poor  consumer,  because  the  energy 
of  the  dressmaker  is  diverted  toward  the  rich ; 
while  Miss  So-and-So  is  paid  $4000  a  year  to  de- 
sign hats,  the  workwoman  wears  a  man's  cap 
rescued  from  the  refuse  heap. 

I  shall  be  told  that  the  rich  are  not  responsible 
for  the  luxurious  desires  of  the  poor;  but  that  is 
evidently  nonsense :  the  rich  themselves  are  not 
innocent  of  prostitution.  I  have  had  reported 
the  case  of  a  well-paid  Russian  dancer  whose 
dress  bills  are  paid  by  two  financiers;    that  of  a 

106 


UNIFORMS   FOR  WOMEN 


French  actress  who  calmly  states  that  she  needs 
three  lovers,  one  for  her  hats,  one  for  her  lingerie, 
and  one  for  her  gowns;  and  a  close  inquiry  into 
the  "bridge  losses"  which  occasionally  provoke 
the  fall  of  rich  men's  daughters  will  show  that 
these  are  dressmakers'  bills.  All  this  is  not  with- 
out its  effect  upon  the  poor.  The  girl  of  the  lower 
classes,  hypnotized  by  fashion  plates,  compelled  to 
witness  at  the  doors  of  fashionable  churches,  in 
the  street,  at  the  music  halls,  and  even  at  the 
picture  palaces,  the  continuous  streaming  past  of 
the  fashion  pageant,  develops  an  intolerable  desire 
for  finery.  You  may  say  that  she  is  wrong,  that 
she  should  practice  self-denial,  but  this  is  not  an 
age  of  self-denial ;  luxury  is  in  the  air,  we  despair 
of  happiness  and  take  to  pleasure,  we  feel  the 
future  life  too  far  ahead,  we  want  to  enjoy.  It  is 
natural  enough,  especially  for  girls  who  are  young 
and  who  feel  unfairly  outclassed  by  richer  women 
who  are  neither  as  young  nor  as  beautiful ;  but 
still  it  is  base.  If  baseness  is  to  go,  the  lesson 
must  come  from  the  top;  if  there  is  to  be  self- 
denial,  then  que  messieurs  les  assassins  commen- 
cent !  Until  the  rich  woman  realizes  that  her 
example  is  her  responsibility  it  will  be  fair  to 
say  that  the  Albemarle  Street  $500  gown  has 
107 


UNIFORMS   FOR  WOMEN 


its  consequence  in  a  prostitute  on  the  Tottenham 
Court  Road. 

The  rich  woman  herself  does  not  escape  scot  free. 
It  is  obvious  that  the  woman  chiefly  occupied  with 
thoughts  of  dress  develops  a  peculiar  kind  of 
frivolity,  that  she  becomes  unfit  to  think  of  art, 
the  public  interest,  perhaps  of  love.  She  is  the 
worst  social  product,  a  parasite,  and  she  is  not 
even  always  beautiful.  Sometimes  she  is  insane : 
the  investigations  of  Doctor  Bernard  Holz  and 
of  Doctor  Rudolf  Foerster  connect  the  mania  for 
fashion  with  paranoia,  and  have  elicited  extraor- 
dinary facts,  such  as  the  collection  of  clothes  by 
insane  women,  and  such  as  cases  of  pyromania 
which  coincided  with  a  craze  for  dress. 

It  is,  indeed,  quite  possible  that  some  women 
might  go  mad  if  they  permanently  felt  themselves 
less  well-dressed  than  their  fellows;  and  that  is 
the  crux  of  the  fashion  idea.  Woman  does  not 
desire  to  be  beautifully  dressed :  she  desires  to 
be  more  beautifully  dressed  than  her  fellows. 
She  wishes  to  insult  and  humiliate  her  sisters, 
and,  as  modern  clothes  are  costly,  she  does  not 
hesitate  to  give  full  play  to  human  cruelty,  to  use 
all  the  resources  of  the  rich  husband  on  whom  she 
preys  to  satisfy  her  pride  and  to  apply  her  arrogant 

108 


UNIFORMS   FOR  WOMEN 


ingenuity  to  the  torture  of  her  sisters.  And  I  said, 
"She  wants  to  be  more  beautiful."  Is  that  quite 
right?  Partly,  though  what  woman  mainly  seeks 
is  not  to  be  beautiful  but  to  be  fashionable ;  the 
words  have  become  synonymous.  Yet  the  fash- 
ions are  not  always  beautiful ;  sometimes  they  are 
hideous,  break  every  line  of  the  body,  make  it 
awkward,  hamper  its  movements.  If  women 
truly  wanted  to  be  beautiful  they  would  not 
follow  the  fashions :  our  little  dark,  sloe-eyed 
women  would  dress  rather  like  the  Japanese,  and 
our  big,  ox-eyed  beauties  would  appear  as  Greeks ; 
but  no,  Juno,  Carmen,  and  Dante's  Beatrice,  all 
together  and  all  in  turn,  don  first  the  crinoline 
and  then  the  hobble  skirt. 

Nor  do  they  want  to  attract  men.  They  think 
they  do  but  they  do  not,  for  they  know  perfectly 
well  that  few  men  realize  what  they  wear,  that 
all  they  observe  is  "something  blue"  or  an  effect 
they  call  "very  doggy"  ;  they  know  also  that  men 
do  not  wed  the  dangerous  smart,  but  the  modest ; 
that  men  fear  the  implication  that  smart  women 
are  unvirtuous,  and  that  they  certainly  fear  their 
dressmakers'  bills.  Nor  is  it  even  true  that  women 
want  many  new  clothes  so  as  to  be  clean :  if  that 
were  true,  men  in  their  well-worn  suits  could  not 
109 


UNIFORMS   FOR  WOMEN 


be  touched  with  a  pitchfork.  The  truth  is  that 
changes  in  fashion  are  a  habit  and  a  hysteria,  an 
advertisement,  an  insult  offered  by  wealth  to 
poverty,  a  degradation  of  women's  qualities  which 
carries  its  own  penalty  in  the  form  of  growing 
mental  baseness. 


Well,  what  shall  we  do?  Women  must  wear  a 
uniform.  Strictly,  they  already  do  wear  a  uni- 
form, for  what  is  a  fashion  but  a  uniform  ?  Some 
years  ago  when  musquash  coats  (and  cheaper 
velveteen)  were  "in",  and  hats  were  very  small, 
there  were  in  London  scores  of  thousands  of  young 
women  so  exactly  alike  that  considerable  confusion 
was  caused  at  tube  stations  and  such  other  places 
where  lovers  meet;  this  simplifies  the  problem  of 
choosing  the  new  uniform.  Let  it  not  be  thought 
that  I  wish  women  to  dress  in  sackcloth,  though 
they  will  certainly  dress  in  sackcloth  if  ever  sack- 
cloth comes  in;  I  do  not  care  what  they  wear, 
provided  they  do  not  continually  alter  its  form, 
and  provided  it  is  not  too  dear.  The  way  in  which 
old  and  young,  tall  and  short,  fat  and  thin,  force 
themselves  into  the  same  color  and  the  same  shape 
is  sheer  socialism;    I  merely  want  to  carry  the 

no 


UNIFORMS  FOR  WOMEN 


uniform  idea  a  little  further,  to  make  it  a  perma- 
nent uniform. 

We  already  have  uniforms  for  women,  apart 
from  the  fashions,  uniforms  which  never  change : 
those  of  the  nurse,  the  nun,  the  parlor-maid,  the 
tea-girl.  We  have  national  costumes,  Dutch, 
Swiss,  Irish,  Japanese,  Italian;  we  have  drill 
suits  and  sports  dresses.  And  they  are  not  ugly. 
All  these  uniformed  women  have  as  good  a  chance 
of  marriage  as  any  others,  and  her  ladyship  gains 
as  many  proposals  on  the  golf  links  as  at  night  on 
the  terrace.  I  would  suggest  that  women  should 
have  two  or  three  uniforms  of  a  kind  to  be  decided, 
which  would  never  change,  and,  I  repeat,  they 
need  not  be  ugly  uniforms. 

Men's  uniforms  are  not  ugly ;  I  would  any  day 
exchange  my  lounge  suit  for  the  uniform  of  a 
guardsman  —  if  I  might  wear  it.  In  this  "if"  is 
the  essence  of  the  whole  idea,  the  whole  practicabil- 
ity of  it.  Men  wear  uniform,  that  is  to  say  lounge 
suits  in  certain  circumstances,  morning  coats  in 
others,  evening  clothes  in  yet  others.  They  never 
vary.  We  are  told  that  they  vary.  Tailors  show 
new  suitings,  the  papers  print  articles  about  men's 
fashions,  and  perhaps  a  button  is  added  or  a  lapel 
is  lengthened,  and  that  is  all.  Nobody  cares, 
in 


UNIFORMS   FOR  WOMEN 


Men  follow  no  fashions  so  far  as  the  fable  of  men's 
fashions  is  true ;  they  dare  not  do  so,  because  to 
do  so  serves  them  ill  in  society.  A  man  who  dares 
to  break  through  the  uniform  idea  of  his  sex  is 
generally  dubbed  a  " bounder";  if  he  is  one  of 
the  very  young,  fancy-socked,  extreme-collared 
kind,  people  smile  and  say,  "  It'll  wear  off  with 
time."  And  women,  who  tolerate  the  dandies  at 
tea-time,  love  the  others. 

The  uniform  would  have  to  be  brought  in  by  a 
group  of  leaders  of  fashion  determined  to  abolish 
fashion.  I  could  sketch  a  dozen  uniforms,  but 
women  would  make  a  great  to-do,  forgetting  that 
most  fashions  are  created  by  men,  so  I  will  confine 
myself  to  timid  suggestions. 

i.  For  general  outdoor  wear  the  coat  and  skirt 
is  the  best,  together  with  a  blouse.  Lace  and  in- 
sertion should  be  abandoned,  and  I  feel  that  the 
skirt  is  too  long  for  walking ;  sometimes  it  is  cer- 
tainly too  tight  to  enable  a  woman  to  get  into  an 
omnibus  or  railway  carriage  gracefully.  Probable 
price,  complete,  $50. 

2.  For  summer  wear,  a  plain  blouse  and  skirt; 
not  the  atrocious  blouse  ending  at  the  belt,  but 
the  beautiful  tunic-blouse  that  falls  over  the  hips. 
Both  blouse  and  skirt  would  need  to  be  made  of  a 

112 


UNIFORMS   FOR  WOMEN 


permanently  fixed,  plain,  and  uni-colored  material. 
Total  cost,  $25. 

3.  If  the  skirt  were  shortened,  leggings,  gaiters, 
and  stockings  would  have  to  be  standardized ;  the 
shoe  buckle,  being  too  costly,  would  disappear. 

4.  A  fixed  type  of  hat,  without  feathers  or 
aigrettes,  made  in  straw  and  trimmed  with  flowers ; 
produced  in  scores  of  thousands,  it  ought  not  to 
cost  more  than  $2.50. 

5.  A  fixed  type  of  evening  gown,  price  $24  or 
$32,  without  any  lace  or  trimmings,  sequins, 
paillettes;  without  overlays  of  flimsies  of  any 
kind;  no  voile,  no  chiffon,  no  tulle,  no  muslin, 
but  a  stuff  of  good  quality,  hanging  in  straight 
folds.     Jewelry  to  be  banned. 

6.  The  afternoon  dress  should  be  completely 
suppressed ;    it  responds  to  no  need. 

7.  The  total  annual  cost  would  be  about  $150. 

I  shall  be  asked  whether  this  can  be  done.  I 
think  it  can.  Recently  the  Queen  of  Italy  created 
a  vogue  for  coral  ornaments  among  the  Roman 
ladies  so  as  to  restore  their  livelihood  to  the  fisher- 
men of  Torre  del  Greco.  That  points  the  way; 
we  do  not  need  sumptuary  laws,  though,  in  times 
to  come,  when  capitalism  is  nothing  but  a  his- 
torical incident,  we  may  have  passed  through 
113 


UNIFORMS   FOR  WOMEN 


such  laws  into  a  fuller  freedom.  It  is  enough  to 
decree  that  any  variation  from  the  new  standard 
is  bad  form.  Human  beings  will  break  all  laws, 
but  they  shrink  if  you  tell  them  that  they  are  in- 
fringing the  rules  of  etiquette.  There  are  many 
men  to-day  who  would  like  to  wear  satin  and  vel- 
vet :  they  dare  not  because  it  is  bad  form.  If, 
therefore,  a  permanent  clothing  scheme  were  es- 
tablished by  strong  patrons,  if  it  were  agreeable 
to  the  eye,  which  is  easy  to  arrange,  I  believe 
that  fashions  could  be  fixed  because  it  would 
be  known  that  a  woman  who  went  beyond  the 
uniform  must  either  be  disreputable  or  suffer 
from  bad  taste. 

6 

I  shall  be  told  that  I  am  warring  against  art. 
That  is  not  true :  some  fashions  are  beautiful,  some 
are  hideous.  Who  would  to-day  wear  the  crin- 
oline? Who  would  wear  the  gigot  sleeve?  They 
are  ugly  —  but,  stay !  Are  they  ?  Will  they  not 
be  worn  in  an  adapted  form  some  time  within  the 
next  generation?  They  will,  because  fashions  are 
not  works  of  art ;  they  are  only  fashions.  Women 
do  not  adapt  the  fashions  to  themselves,  they  adapt 
themselves  to  the  fashions,  and  it  is  a  current  joke 
114 


UNIFORMS   FOR  WOMEN 


that  even  woman's  anatomy  is  adjusted  to  suit 
the  clothes  of  the  day. 

Doubtless  I  shall  be  challenged  on  this,  and 
told  that  woman's  individuality  expresses  itself  in 
her  clothes.  That  again  is  not  true ;  the  girl  with 
a  face  like  a  Madonna  will  wear  a  ballet  skirt  if 
it  comes  in,  and  if  she  has  to  " adapt"  the  ballet 
skirt  to  the  Madonna  idea  I  should  like  to  know 
how  it  is  going  to  be  done.  Indeed  the  one  thing 
woman  avoids  doing  is  expressing  her  individuality ; 
she  wants  what  Oscar  Wilde  called  "the  holy  calm 
of  feeling  perfectly  dressed",  that  is,  like  everybody 
else,  and  a  little  more  expensively. 

It  may  be  retorted,  however,  that  uniform  is 
not  cheap.  That  again  is  untrue.  When  a  uni- 
form is  standardized,  turned  out  in  quantities  and 
never  varied,  it  can  be  made  very  cheaply.  Men's 
clothing,  which  is  not  fully  standardized,  is  such 
that  no  man  need  spend  more  than  $250  a  year. 
That  is  the  condition  I  want  for  women.  Of  course 
it  will  make  unemployed,  and  our  sympathy  will 
be  invoked  for  dressmakers  thrown  out  of  work: 
that  is  the  old  argument  against  railways  on  behalf 
of  coaches,  against  the  mule-jenny,  against  every 
engine  of  human  progress,  and  it  is  sheer  barbar- 
ism. Labor  redistributes  itself;  money  wasted 
ii5 


UNIFORMS   FOR  WOMEN 


on  women's  clothes  will  be  used  in  other  trades 
which  will  reabsorb  the  labor  and  make  it  useful 
instead  of  sterile. 

An  apparently  more  powerful  argument  is  that 
uniform  would  deprive  women  of  their  individual- 
ity: it  cannot  be  much  of  an  individuality  that 
depends  upon  a  frock,  and  I  am  reduced  to  wonder 
whether  some  women  lose  their  personality  once 
their  frock  is  taken  off.  Still,  there  is  a  little  force 
in  the  argument,  for  it  seems  to  lead  to  the  con- 
clusion that  beautiful  women  will  enjoy  undue 
advantage  when  dressed  as  are  the  ill-favored. 
But  this  is  not  a  true  conclusion;  it  is  not  even 
true  to  say  that  one  cannot  be  distinctive  in  uni- 
form, as  anybody  will  realize  who  compares  a 
smart  soldier  with  an  untidy  one.  I  have  myself 
worn  a  soldier's  coat  and  know  what  care  may 
make  of  it.  Nor  do  I  believe  that  the  beautiful 
would  win;  by  winning  is  meant  winning  men, 
but  we  know  perfectly  well  that  it  is  not  body 
which  wins  men :  it  wins  them  only  to  lose  them 
after  a  while.  It  is  something  else  which  wins 
men:  individuality,  wit,  gaiety,  cleverness,  or 
cleverness  clever  enough  to  appear  foolish.  And 
we  men  who  wear  uniform,  does  not  our  individu- 
ality manage  to  attract?     It  does;    and  indeed  I 

116 


UNIFORMS   FOR  WOMEN 


go  further :  I  assert  that  fashions  smother  individ- 
uality because  they  are  tyrannical  and  much  more 
obtrusive  than  uniforms.  Woman's  charms  are 
to-day  dwarfed  because  men  are  dazzled  and  mis- 
led by  the  meretricious  paraphernalia  which  clothe 
woman;  the  true  charms  have  to  struggle  for 
life.  I  want  to  give  them  full  play,  to  enable 
men  to  choose  better  and  more  sanely,  no  longer 
the  empty  odalisque  but  the  woman  whose  per- 
sonality is  such  that  it  can  dominate  her  uniform. 
That  will  be  a  true  race  and  a  finer  than  the  game 
of  sex-temptation  which  women  think  they  are 
playing. 

It  may  be  said  that  uniform  will  do  away  with 
class  distinctions,  that  one  will  no  longer  be  able 
to  tell  a  lady  from  one  who  is  not.  That  is  not 
true.  What  one  will  no  longer  be  able  to  tell  is  a 
rich  woman  from  a  poor  one ;  and  who  is  to  com- 
plain of  that  ?  Surely  it  will  not  be  men,  for  it  is 
not  true,  I  repeat,  that  men  admire  extravagant 
clothes;  nor  are  they  tempted  by  them;  nor  do 
women  dress  to  tempt  them:  at  any  rate,  the 
seduction  of  Adam  was  not  compassed  in  that 
way. 

Besides,  women  give  away  their  own  case:  if 
their  clothes  were  intended  to  attract  men,  then 
117 


UNIFORMS  FOR  WOMEN 


surely  married  women  would  cease  to  follow  the 
fashions  unless,  which  I  am  reluctant  to  conclude, 
they  still  desire  to  pursue  after  marriage  their 
nefarious,  heart-breaking  career. 

The  last  suggestion  is  that  women  would  not 
wear  the  uniform.  Not  follow  a  fashion?  This 
has  never  happened  before. 

I  adhere  therefore  to  my  general  view  that  if 
woman  is  to  be  diverted  from  the  path  that  leads 
straight  toward  a  greater  degradation  of  her  facul- 
ties ;  if  household  budgets  are  to  be  relieved  so  as 
to  leave  money  for  pleasure  and  for  culture;  if 
true  beauty  is  to  take  the  place  of  tinsel,  feathers, 
frills,  ruffles,  poudre  de  riz;  if  middle-class  women 
are  to  cease  to  live  in  bitterness  because  they  can- 
not keep  up  with  the  rich ;  if  the  daughters  of  the 
poor  are  no  longer  to  be  stimulated  and  corrupted 
by  example  into  poverty  and  prostitution,  it  will 
be  necessary  for  the  few  who  lead  the  many  to 
realize  that  simplicity,  modesty,  moderation,  and 
grace  are  the  only  things  which  will  enable  women 
to  gain  for  themselves,  and  for  men,  peace  and 
satisfaction  out  of  a  civilization  every  day  more 
hectic. 


118 


IV 

WOMAN  AND   THE  PAINT  POT 

It  is  in  a  shrinking  spirit  that  I  venture  to 
suggest  that  woman  has  so  far  entirely  failed  to 
affirm  her  capacity  in  the  pictorial  arts,  for  I 
address  myself  to  an  audience  which  contains 
many  sculptors  and  pictorial  artists,  an  audience 
of  serious  and  enthusiastic  people  to  whom  art 
matters  as  much  and  perhaps  more  than  life. 
But  it  is  of  no  use  maintaining  illusions;  woman 
has  exhibited,  and  is  exhibiting,  very  great  artistic 
capacities  in  the  histrionic  art,  in  dancing,  in 
executive  music,  and  in  literature.  There  is, 
therefore,  no  case  for  those  who  argue  that  woman 
has  no  artistic  capacity.  She  has.  I  select  but 
a  few  out  of  the  many  when  I  quote  the  actresses, 
Siddons,  Rachel,  La  Duse,  Sarah  Bernhardt,  Ellen 
Terry ;  the  dancers,  La  Duncan,  Pavlova,  Genee ; 
the  literary  women,  the  Brontes,  Madame  de 
Stael,  George  Eliot,  Sappho,  Christina  Rossetti; 
119 


WOMAN  AND   THE  PAINT   POT 

among    the    more    modern,    May    Sinclair    and 
Lucas  Malet. 

At  first  sight,  however,  ifis  curious  that  I 
should  be  able  to  quote  no  composers  and  no 
dramatists ;  it  is  impossible  to  take  Guy  d'Hardelot 
and  Theresa  del  Riego  seriously.  And  the  women 
dramatists,  taken  as  a  whole,  hardly  exist.  This 
would  go  to  show  that  there  is  some  strength  in 
the  contention  that  woman  is  purely  executive 
and  uncreative;  but  this  cannot  be  true,  for  the 
list  of  writers  I  have  given,  which  is  very  far 
from  being  exhaustive,  and  which  is  being  aug- 
mented every  day  by  promising  girl  writers,  shows 
that  woman  has  creative  capacity,  creative  in  the 
sense  that  she  can  evolve  character  and  scene, 
and  treat  relations  in  that  way  which  can  be 
described  as  art.  If,  therefore,  there  have  been 
no  women  painters  of  note,  it  cannot  be  because 
woman  has  no  creative  capacity.  It  may  be  sug- 
gested that  those  women  who  have  creative  capac- 
ity turn  to  literature,  but  that  is  a  very  rash  as- 
sumption. For  creative  men  turn  to  any  one  of 
the  half-dozen  forms  of  art,  and  are  not  mo- 
nopolized by  literature;  there  is  no  reason, 
mental  or  physical,  why  the  female  genius 
should  be  capable  of   traveling   only   along   one 

1 20 


WOMAN  AND   THE  PAINT   POT 

line.     The  problem  is  a  problem  of  direction,  a 
problem  of  medium. 

My  potential  opponents  will  probably  deny  that 
there  have  been,  and  are,  no  women  painters. 
They  will  quote  the  names  of  Angelica  Kaufmann, 
of  Vigee-Lebrun,  of  Rosa  Bonheur,  of  Berthe 
Morisot,  of  Elizabeth  Butler;  the  more  modern 
will  mention  Ella  Bedford,  Lucy  Kemp-Welch; 
the  most  modern  will  put  forward  Anne  Estelle 
Rice ;  and  one  or  two  may  shyly  whisper  Maude 
Goodman.  But,  honestly,  does  this  amount  to 
anything?  I  do  not  suppose  that  Lady  Elizabeth 
Butler's  "Inkermann"  or  "Floreat  Etona"  will 
outlive  the  works  of  Detaille  or  of  Meissonier, 
however  doubtful  be  the  value  of  these  men ;  the 
fame  of  Angelica  Kaufmann,  though  enhanced  by 
the  patronage  of  kings,  has  not  been  perpetuated 
by  Bartolozzi,  in  spite  of  that  etcher's  inflated 
reputation.  Rosa  Bonheur's  " Horse  Fair"  hangs 
in  the  National  Gallery,  and  another  of  her  works 
in  the  Luxembourg,  but  merits  which  balance 
those  of  Landseer  are  not  enough ;  and  Berthe 
Morisot  walked,  it  is  true,  in  the  footprints  of 
Manet,  but  did  her  feet  fill  them?  The  truth 
of  the  matter  is  that  there  has  not  been  a 
woman  Velasquez,  a  woman  Rembrandt. 
121 


WOMAN  AND   THE  PAINT   POT 

Now,  as  some  of  my  readers  may  know,  I  do  not 
make  a  habit  of  belittling  woman  and  her  work. 
My  writings  show  that  I  am  one  of  the  most  ex- 
treme feminists  of  the  day,  and  I  am  well  aware 
that  woman  must  not  be  judged  upon  her  past, 
that  it  is  perhaps  not  enough  to  judge  her  on  her 
present  position,  and  that  imagination,  the  only 
spirit  with  which  criticism  should  be  informed  if 
it  is  to  have  any  creative  value,  should  take  note 
of  the  potentialities  of  woman.  But  still,  though 
we  may  write  of!  much  of  the  past  and  flout  the 
record  of  insult  and  outrage  which  is  the  history 
of  woman  under  the  government  of  man,  we  can- 
not entirely  ignore  the  present:  the  present  may 
not  be  the  father  of  the  future,  but  it  is  certainly 
one  of  its  ancestors.  We  have  to-day  a  number 
of  women  who  paint  —  the  great  majority,  such 
as  Mrs.  Von  Glehn,  Ella  Bedford,  Lucy  Kemp- 
Welch,  and  others  who  are  hung  a  little  higher  over 
the  line,  are  rendering  Nature  and  persons  with 
inspired  and  photographic  zeal;  others,  such  as 
Anne  Estelle  Rice,  Jessie  Dismorr,  Georges  Banks, 
are  inclined  to  "fling  their  paint  pot  into  the  faces 
of  the  public."  Some  do  not  abhor  Herkomer, 
others  are  banded  with  Matisse;  but  though  to 
be  Herkomer  may  not  be  supreme,  and  though 

122 


WOMAN  AND   THE  PAINT   POT 

to  be  Matisse  may  perhaps  be  insane,  it  must 
regretfully  be  conceded  that  the  heights  of  the 
Royal  Academy  and  of  Parnassus  (or  whatever 
the  painter's  mountain  may  be)  are  not  haunted 
by  the  woman  painter.  Without  being  carried 
away  by  the  author  of  " Bubbles",  I  am  not  in- 
clined to  be  carried  away  by  Maude  Goodman 
and  the  splendours  of  " Taller  Than  Mother." 
Lucy  Kemp- Welch's  New  Forest  ponies  are  ponies, 
but  I  do  not  suppose  that  they  will  be  trotting  in 
the  next  century;  they  do  not  balance  even  the 
work  of  Furse. 

Let  me  not  be  reproached  because  I  use  the 
low  standard  of  the  Royal  Academy,  for  if  woman 
has  a  case  at  all  she  must  prove  herself  on  all 
planes;  it  is  as  important  that  she  should  equal 
the  second-rate  people  as  that  she  should  shine 
among  the  first-rate.  I  do  not  look  for  a  time  to 
come  when  woman  will  be  superior  to  man,  but 
to  a  time,  quite  remote  enough  for  my  speculations, 
when  she  will  be  his  equal,  when  she  will  be  able 
to  keep  up  with  all  his  activities.  Curiously 
enough,  the  advanced  female  painters  are  not  so 
inferior  to  the  advanced  men  painters  as  are  the 
stereotyped  women  to  their  masculine  rivals. 
There  is  excellence  in  the  work  of  Anne  Estelle 
123 


WOMAN  AND   THE  PAINT   POT 

Rice  and  Georges  Banks,  though  they  perhaps  do 
not  equal  Fergusson;  but  they  are  less  remote 
from  him  in  spirit  and  realization  than  are  the 
lesser  women  from  the  lesser  men.  That  is  a  fact 
of  immense  importance,  for  it  is  evident  that 
nothing  is  so  hopeful  as  this  reduction  in  the  in- 
feriority of  female  painting.  It  may  be  that 
masculine  painting  is  decaying,  which  would 
facilitate  woman's  victory,  but  I  do  not  think  so ; 
modern  masculine  painting  has  never  been  so 
vigorous,  so  inspired  by  an  idea  since  the  great 
religious  uprush  of  the  Primitives. 

Women  are  striving  to  conform  not  to  a  lower 
but  to  a  higher  standard,  a  standard  where  the 
sensuality  of  art  is  informed  by  intellect.  If, 
therefore,  they  conform  more  closely  to  the  stand- 
ard which  men  are  establishing,  they  are  more 
than  holding  their  own ;   they  are  gaining  ground. 

Yet  they  are  still,  in  numbers  and  in  quality, 
much  inferior  to  the  men.  Anne  Estelle  Rice 
alone  cannot  tilt  in  the  ring  against  Fergusson, 
Gaugin,  Matisse,  Picasso.  And  it  is  not  true  that 
they  have  been  entirely  deprived  of  opportunity. 
Up  to  the  'seventies  or  'eighties,  woman  was 
certainly  very  much  hampered  by  public  opinion. 
For  some   centuries  it   had   been   held   that   she 

124 


WOMAN  AND   THE  PAINT   POT 

should  paint  flowers,  but  not  bodies;  nowadays, 
dizzily  soaring,  she  has  begun  to  paint  cranes  and 
gasometers.  The  result  of  the  old  attitude  was 
that  the  work  of  women  was  mainly  futile  because 
it  was  expected  to  be  futile ;  though  painters  were 
not  always  gentlemen,  female  painters  seemed  to 
have  to  be  ladies,  but  times  changed.  There 
came  the  djibbah,  Bernard  Shaw,  and  the  ciga- 
rette ;  women  began  to  flock  into  Colarossi's  and 
the  Slade,  into  the  minor  schools  where,  I  regret 
to  say,  the  new  spirit  has  yet  to  blow  and  to  do 
away  with  the  interesting  practice  of  the  life  class 
where  the  male  model  wears  bathing  drawers. 
Woman  has  had  her  opportunity,  and  any  morn- 
ing on  the  Boulevard  Montparnasse  you  can  see 
her  carrying  her  paraphernalia  towards  the  Grande 
Chaumiere  and  the  other  studios.  She  is  suffering 
a  good  deal  from  the  effects  of  past  neglect,  but 
much  of  that  neglect  is  so  far  away  that  we  must 
ask  ourselves  why  woman  has  not  yet  responded  to 
the  more  tender  attitude  of  modern  days.  For 
she  has  not  entirely  responded  ;  she  is  still  either  a 
little  afraid  of  novelty  or  inclined  to  hug  it,  to 
affront  the  notorious  perils  of  love  at  first  sight. 

I  believe  that  the  causes  of  women's  failure  in 
painting     are     twofold  —  manual     and     mental. 
125 


WOMAN  AND   THE  PAINT   POT 

Though  disinclined  to  generalize  upon  the  female 
temperament,  because  such  generalizations  gener- 
ally lead  to  the  discovery  of  a  paradox,  I  am 
conscious  in  woman  of  a  quality  of  impatience. 

While  woman  will  exhibit  infinite  patience,  in- 
finite obstinacy,  in  the  pursuit  of  an  end,  she  is 
often  inclined  to  leap  too  quickly  towards  that 
end.  To  use  a  metaphor,  she  may  spend  her 
whole  life  in  trying  to  cut  down  a  tree  without 
taking  the  preliminary  trouble  to  have  her  ax 
sharpened;  she  does  unwillingly  the  immense 
labor  on  the  antique,  she  neglects  her  anatomy, 
she  sacrifices  line  to  color. 

This  is  natural  enough,  for  she  has  a  keen  sense 
of  color.  As  witness  her  clothes.  When  clothes 
are  the  work  of  woman  they  are  generally  beautiful 
in  color;  when  they  are  beautiful  in  line  they 
are  generally  by  Poiret.  For  line  tends  to  be 
pure  and  cold,  and  I  hope  I  will  shock  nobody 
when  I  suggest  that  purity  and  coldness  are 
masculine  rather  than  feminine.  Color  is  the 
expression  of  passion,  line  is  the  expression  of 
intellect,  or  rather  of  that  curious  combination  of 
intellect  and  passion,  of  intellect  directing  passion, 
and  of  passion  inflaming  intellect,  which  is  art  as 
understood  by  man.     It  is  to  this  second  group  of 

126 


WOMAN  AND  THE  PAINT   POT 

causes,  those  I  have  called  mental,  that  the  infe- 
riority of  the  woman  painter  is  traceable.  There 
is  a  lack  of  intellect  in  her  work.  It  is  true  that 
the  male  painter  is  often  just  a  painter,  and  that 
I  can  think  of  no  case  to-day  which  reproduces 
the  engineering  capacities  of  Leonardo  da  Vinci, 
but  I  refer  rather  to  a  general  intellectual  sweep 
than  to  a  specialized  capacity.  Men  do  not  hold 
themselves  so  far  aloof  from  politics,  business 
and  philosophy  as  do  women;  too  many  of  the 
latter  read  nothing  whatever.  For  some  painters 
a  novel  is  too  much,  while  their  selection  among 
the  contents  of  the  newspaper  might  be  improved 
upon  by  a  domestic  servant.  There  is  a  lack  of 
depth,  a  lack  of  intellectual  quality,  of  that  "  gen- 
eral" quality  which,  directed  into  other  channels, 
produces  the  engineer,  the  business  man  and  the 
politician.  I  do  not  believe  in  "artistic  capacity", 
" scientific  capacity",  "business  capacity";  there 
is  nothing  but  "capacity"  which  takes  varying 
forms,  just  as  there  is  red  hair  and  black  hair, 
but  always  hair.  In  male  painting  intellect  some- 
times stands  behind  passion;  in  female  painting 
the  attitude  is  purely  sensuous,  and  that  is  not  to 
be  wondered  at :  from  the  days  of  the  anthropoid 
ape  to  this  one  we  have  developed  nothing  in 
127 


WOMAN  AND   THE  PAINT   POT 

woman  but  the  passionate  quality ;  we  have  taught 
her  to  charm,  to  smile,  and  to  lie  until  she  thinks 
she  can  do  nothing  but  charm,  and  believes  in 
her  own  lies.  We  have  refused  her  education,  we 
have  made  her  into  a  slave.  Thus,  while  many  of 
the  male  painters  are  not  intellectuals,  they  have 
been  able  to  draw  upon  the  higher  average  quality 
of  the  male  mind,  while  woman  to-day,  desirous 
of  so  doing,  will  find  very  little  to  the  credit  of  the 
account  of  her  sex. 

What  is  the  conclusion  to  be  drawn?  It  is  to 
my  mind  obvious  enough.  If  woman  is  producing 
inferior  work  it  is  because  she  is  still  an  inferior 
creature,  but  I  do  not  think  she  will  remain  one. 
Her  progress  during  the  last  thirty  years  has  been 
staggering ;  she  has  forced  herself  into  the  trades, 
into  professions,  into  politics;  she  has  produced 
standard  works ;  in  one  or  two  cases  she  has  been 
creative  in  science;  and  I  believe,  therefore,  that 
her  intellect  is  on  the  up  grade,  and  that  her  sex 
is  accumulating  those  resources  which  will  serve 
as  a  background  to  the  artistic  development  of 
her  passionate  faculty.  Woman  is  about  to  gain 
political  power.  She  will  use  it  to  improve  the 
education  of  her  sex,  to  broaden  its  opportunities. 
She  is  coming  out  into  the  world  in  cooperation 

128 


WOMAN  AND   THE  PAINT   POT 

and  in  conflict  with  man;  she  will  become  more 
self-conscious,  and  gain  a  solidarity  of  sex  upon 
which  will  follow  mutual  mental  stimulation  and 
specialized  sex  development.  For  that  reason  I 
believe  woman's  progress  will  not  be  less  in  the 
pictorial  arts  than  in  other  fields  if  she  develops 
in  herself  the  fullness  of  life  and  its  implications. 
She  will  inevitably  wage  the  sex  war :  she  will  gain 
her  artistic  deserts  after  the  sex  peace. 


129 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF  THE  HOME 

There  is  something  the  matter  with  the  home. 
It  may  be  merely  the  subtle  decay  which,  in  birth 
beginning  and  in  death  persisting,  escorts  all 
things  human  and  perchance  divine.  It  may  be 
decay  assisted  by  the  violence  of  a  time  unborn 
and  striving  through  novelty  toward  its  own  end, 
or  toward  an  endlessness  of  change.  But,  what- 
ever the  causes,  which  interest  little  a  hasty 
generation,  signs  written  in  brick  and  mortar  and 
social  custom,  in  rebellion  and  in  aspiration,  are 
not  wanting  to  show  that  the  home,  so  long  the 
center  of  Anglo-Saxon  and  American  society,  is 
doomed.  And,  as  is  usual  in  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury, as  has  been  usual  since  the  middle  of  the 
nineteenth,  woman  is  at  the  bottom  of  the  change. 
It  is  women  who  now  make  revolutions.  A  hundred 
years  ago  it  was  men  who  made  revolutions ;  nowa- 
days they  content  themselves  with  resolutions.     So 

130 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF   THE   HOME 

it  has  been  left  for  woman,  more  animal,  more 
radical,  more  divinely  endowed  with  the  faculty  of 
seeing  only  her  own  side,  to  sap  the  foundations  of 
what  was  supposed  to  be  her  shelter. 

I  do  not  suppose  that  the  household  has  ever 
been  quite  as  much  of  a  shelter  for  women  as  the 
Victorian  philosophers  said,  and  possibly  believed ; 
an  elementary  study  of  the  feminist  question  will 
certainly  incline  the  unprejudiced  to  see  that  the 
home,  which  has  for  so  long  masqueraded  in  the 
guise  of  woman's  friend,  has  on  the  whole  been 
her  enemy ;  that  instead  of  being  her  protector  it 
has  been  her  oppressor;  that  it  has  not  been  her 
fortress,  but  her  jail.  Woman  has  felt  in  the 
home  much  as  a  workman  might  feel  if  he  were 
given  the  White  House  as  a  present,  told  to  live 
in  it  and  keep  it  clean  without  help  on  two  dollars 
a  week.  If  the  home  be  a  precious  possession,  it 
may  very  well  be  a  possession  bought  at  too  high 
a  price  —  at  the  price  of  youth,  of  energy,  and  of 
enlightenment.  The  whole  attitude  of  woman 
toward  the  home  is  one  of  rebellion  —  not  of  all 
women,  of  course,  for  most  of  them  still  accept 
that,  though  all  that  is  may  not  be  good,  all  that 
is  must  be  made  to  do.  Resignation,  humility, 
and  self-sacrifice  have  for  a  thousand  generations 
131 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF  THE   HOME 

been  the  worst  vices  of  woman,  but  it  is  apparent 
that  at  last  aggressiveness  and  selfishness  are  de- 
veloping her  toward  nobility.  She  is  growing 
aware  that  she  is  a  human  being,  a  discovery 
which  the  centuries  had  not  made,  and  naturally 
she  hates  her  gilded  cage. 

Woman  is  tired  of  a  home  that  is  too  large, 
where  the  third  floor  gets  dirty  while  she  is  clean- 
ing the  first;  of  a  home  that  cannot  be  left  lest 
it  should  be  burglared ;  of  a  home  where  there  is 
always  a  slate  wrong,  or  a  broken  window,  or  a 
shortage  of  coal.  She  is  tired  of  being  immolated 
on  the  domestic  hearth.  One  of  them,  neither 
advanced  nor  protesting,  gave  me  a  little  while 
ago  an  account  of  what  she  called  a  characteristic 
day.     I  reproduce  it  untouched : 

THE  DAY  OF  A  REALLY  NICE  ENGLISHWOMAN 

8  a.m.  —  Early  tea ;  rise ;  no  bath.  [The  husband  has 
the  only  bath,  and  the  boiler  cannot  make  another  until 
ten.] 

9  a.m.  —  Breakfast.  [The  husband  takes  the  only 
newspaper  away  to  the  office.] 

9.30  a.m.  —  Conversation  with  the  cook :  hardness  of 
the  butcher's  meat ;  difficulty  because  there  are  only  three 
eatable  animals ;  degeneration  of  the  butter ;  grocery  and 
milk  problems. 

132 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF  THE  HOME 

Telephone.  —  A  social  engagement  is  made. 

Conversation  with  the  cook  resumed :  report  on  a  myste- 
rious disease  of  the  kitchen  boiler ;  report  on  the  oil-man ; 
report  on  the  plumber. 

Correspondence  begun  and  interrupted  by  the  parlor- 
maid, who  demands  a  new  stock  of  glass. 

Correspondence  resumed;  interrupted  by  the  parlor- 
maid's demand  for  change  with  which  to  pay  the  cleaner. 

Rush  up-stairs  to  show  which  covers  are  to  go. 

Correspondence  resumed,  and  interrupted  by  the  tele- 
phone :  the  green-grocer  states  that  some  of  the  vegetables 
she  wants  cannot  be  procured. 

Correspondence  resumed ;  interrupted  by  the  nurse,  who 
wishes  to  change  the  baby's  milk. 

Three  telephone  calls. 

Correspondence  resumed,  and  interrupted  by  the  house- 
maid, who  wants  new  brooms. 

n  a.m.  —  The  children  have  gone;  the  servants  are  at 
work.    Therefore : 

11-11.15  a.m.  —  Breathing  space. 

1 1.1 5-1 1.45  a.m.  —  Paying  bills  —  electricity,  gas, 
clothes;  checking  the  weekly  books,  reading  laundry 
circulars. 

12  m.  —  Goes  out.  It  is  probably  wet  [this  being  Eng- 
land], so,  not  being  very  well  off,  she  flounders  through  mud. 
Interview  with  the  plumber  as  to  the  boiler;  shoes  for 
Gladys ;  glass  for  the  parlor-maid ;  brooms  for  the  house- 
maid; forgets  various  things  she  ought  to  have  done; 
these  worry  her  during  lunch. 

1.30  p.m.  —  Lunch. 

*33 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF  THE  HOME 

2.30  p.m.  —  Fagged  out,  lies  down,  but  — 

2.45  p.m.  —  The  husband  telephones  to  tell  her  to  go 
to  the  library  and  get  him  a  book. 

3.15  p.m.  —  Is  fitted  by  the  dressmaker.     Feels  better. 

4.30  p.m.  —  Charming  at  tea. 

5.45  p.m.  —  Compulsory  games  with  the  children. 

6.15  p.m.  —  Ultimatum  from  the  servants:  the  puppy 
must  be  killed  for  reasons  which  cannot  be  specified  in  an 
American  magazine. 

6.30-6.35  p.m.  —  Literature,  art,  music,  and  science. 
Then  dress  for  dinner. 

7.30  p.m.  —  Charming  at  dinner.  Grand  fantasia  to  en- 
tertain the  male  after  a  strenuous  day  in  the  city.  Con- 
versation: golf,  business,  cutting  remarks  about  other 
people,  and  no  contradicting. 

8.45-9.15  p.m.  —  Literature,  art,  music,  and  science. 

Last  post:  Circulars,  bills,  invitations  to  be  answered; 
request  from  a  brother  in  India  to  send  jam  which  can  be 
bought  only  in  a  suburb  fourteen  miles  distant. 

10.30  p.m.  —  Attempted  bath,  but  the  plumber  has  not 
mended  the  boiler,  after  all. 

1 1  p.m.  —  Sleep  ...  up  to  the  beginning  of  another 
nice  Englishwoman's  day. 

She  may  exaggerate,  but  I  do  not  think  so,  for 
as  I  write  these  lines  three  stories  of  a  house  hang 
over  my  head,  and  I  hear  culinary  noises  below. 
Being  a  man,  I  am  supposed  to  rule  all  this,  but, 
fortunately,  not  to  govern  it.  And  I  am  moved 
to  interest  when  I  reflect  that  in  this  street  of 
134 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF  THE  HOME 

sixty  houses,  that  which  is  going  on  in  my  house 
is  probably  multiplied  by  sixty.  I  have  a  vision 
of  those  sixty  houses,  each  with  its  dining  room 
and  drawing-room,  its  four  to  eight  bedrooms, 
and  its  basement.  There  are  sixty  drawing-rooms 
in  this  street,  and  at  n  a.m.  there  is  not  a  single 
human  being  in  them ;  and  at  3  p.m.  there  is  no- 
body in  the  sixty  dining  rooms,  except  on  Sunday, 
when  a  few  men  are  asleep  in  them.  And  I  have 
horrid  visions  of  our  sixty  kitchens,  our  sixty 
sculleries,  our  sixty  pantries ;  of  our  one  hundred 
and  fifty  servants,  and  our  sixty  cooks  (and  cooks 
so  hard  to  get  and  to  bear  with  when  you've  got 
them!).  And  I  think  of  all  our  dinner  sets,  of 
the  twelve  thousand  pieces  of  crockery  which  we 
need  in  our  little  street.  To  think  of  twelve 
thousand  articles  of  crockery  is  to  realize  our  re- 
moteness from  the  monkey.  And  the  nurses,  as 
they  pass,  fill  me  with  wonder,  for  some  of  them 
attend  one  child,  some  two,  while  sometimes  three 
children  have  two  nurses  —  until  I  wonder  what 
percentage  of  nurse  is  really  required  to  keep  in 
order  an  obviously  unruly  generation. 

Complex,  enormous,  it  is  not  even  cheap.     Pri- 
vacy, the  purest  jewel  humanity  can  find,  seems  to 
be  the  dearest.     This  inflated  individual  home,  it  is 
135 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF  THE  HOME 

marvelous  how  it  has  survived !  Like  most  hu- 
man institutions,  it  has  probably  survived  because 
it  was  there.  It  has  taken  woman's  time;  it 
has  taken  much  of  her  energy,  much  of  her  health 
and  looks.  Worst  of  all,  it  seems  to  have  taken 
from  her  some  of  the  consideration  to  which  as  a 
human  being  she  was  entitled.  Let  there  be  no 
mistake  about  that.  In  spite  of  proclamations  as 
to  the  sacredness  of  the  home  and  the  dignity  of 
labor,  the  fact  remains  that  the  domestic  man,  the 
kind  that  can  hang  a  picture  straight,  is  generally 
treated  by  male  acquaintances  with  sorrowful 
tolerance;  should  he  attempt  to  wash  the  baby, 
he  becomes  the  kind  of  man  about  whom  the 
comic  songs  are  written.  (I  may  seem  rather 
violent,  but  I  once  tried  to  wash  a  baby.)  So 
that  apparently  the  dignified  occupations  of  the 
household  are  not  deemed  dignified  by  man. 
This  is  evident  enough,  for  office-cleaners,  laun- 
dresses, step-girls,  are  never  replaced  by  men. 
These  are  the  feminine  occupations,  the  coarse 
occupations,  requiring  no  special  intelligence. 

The  truth  is  that  the  status  of  domestic  labor  is 
low.  An  exception  is  made  in  favor  of  the  cook, 
but  only  by  people  who  know  what  cooking  is, 
which  excludes  the  majority  of  the  world.     It  is 

136 


THE  DOWNFALL   OF  THE  HOME 

true  that  of  late  years  attempts  have  been  made 
to  raise  the  capacity  of  the  domestic  laborer  by 
inducing  her  to  attend  classes  on  cooking,  on 
child  nurture,  etc.,  but,  in  the  main,  in  ninety-nine 
per  cent  of  bourgeois  marriages,  it  is  assumed 
that  any  fool  can  run  a  house.  It  matters  very 
little  whether  a  fool  can  run  a  house  or  not ;  what 
does  matter  from  the  woman's  point  of  view  is 
that  she  is  given  no  credit  for  efficient  household 
management,  and  that  is  one  reason  why  she  has 
rebelled.  It  does  not  matter  whether  you  are  a 
solicitor,  an  archbishop,  or  a  burglar,  the  savor 
goes  out  of  your  profession  if  it  is  not  publicly 
esteemed  at  its  true  worth.  We  have  heard  of 
celebrated  impostors,  of  celebrated  politicians,  but 
who  has  ever  heard  of  a  celebrated  housekeeper? 

The  modern  complaint  of  woman  is  that  the 
care  of  the  house  has  divorced  her  from  growing 
interests,  from  literature  and,  what  is  more  im- 
portant, from  the  newspaper,  partly  from  music, 
entirely  from  politics.  It  is  a  purely  material 
question;  there  are  only  twenty-four  hours  in 
every  day,  and  there  are  some  things  one  cannot 
hustle.  One  can  no  more  hustle  the  English 
joint  than  the  decrees  of  the  Supreme  Court. 
Moreover,  and  this  is  a  collateral  fact,  an  empti- 
137 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF  THE  HOME 

ness  has  formed  around  woman ;  while  on  the  one 
side  she  was  being  tempted  by  the  professions 
that  opened  to  her,  by  the  interests  ready  to  her 
hand,  the  old  demands  of  less  organized  homes 
were  falling  away  from  her.  Once  upon  a  time 
she  was  a  slave ;  now  she  is  a  half-timer,  and  the 
taste  of  liberty  that  has  come  to  her  has  made  her 
more  intolerant  of  the  old  laws  than  she  was  in 
the  ancient  days  of  her  serfdom.  Not  much  more 
than  seventy  years  ago  it  was  still  the  custom  in 
lower  middle-class  homes  for  the  woman  to  sew 
and  bake  and  brew.  These  occupations  were  re- 
linquished, for  the  distribution  of  labor  made  it 
possible  to  have  them  better  done  at  a  lower  cost. 
In  the  'fifties  and  the  'sixties  the  great  shops 
began  to  grow,  stores  to  rise  of  the  type  of  Whiteley 
and  Wanamaker.  Woman  ceased  to  be  industrial, 
and  became  commercial;  her  chief  occupation 
was  now  shopping,  and  if  she  were  intelligent  and 
painstaking  she  could  make  a  better  bargain 
with  Jones,  in  Queen's  Road,  than  with  Smith, 
in  Portchester  Street.  But  of  late  years  even  that 
has  begun  to  go;  the  great  stores  dominate  the 
retail  trade,  and  now,  qualities  being  equal,  there 
is  hardly  anything  to  pick  between  universal 
provider  Number  i,  at  one  end  of  the  town,  and 

138 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF  THE  HOME 

Number  2,  equally  universal,  at  the  other.  Also 
the  stores  sell  everything;  they  facilitate  pur- 
chases ;  the  housekeeper  need  not  go  to  ten  shops, 
for  at  a  single  one  she  can  buy  cheese,  bicycles, 
and  elephants.  That  is  only  an  indication  of  the 
movement;  the  time  will  come,  probably  within 
our  lifetime,  when  the  great  stores  of  the  towns 
will  have  crushed  the  small  traders  and  turned 
them  into  branch  managers;  when  all  the  prices 
will  be  alike,  all  the  goods  alike;  when  food  will 
be  so  graded  that  it  will  no  longer  be  worth  the 
housekeeper's  while  to  try  and  discover  a  par- 
ticularly good  sirloin  —  instead  she  will  telephone 
for  seven  pounds  of  quality  AF,  Number  14,692. 
Then,  having  less  to  do,  woman  will  want  to  do 
still  less,  and  the  modern  rebellion  against  house 
and  home  will  find  in  her  restlessness  a  greater 
impetus. 

When  did  the  rebellion  begin?  Almost,  it 
might  be  said,  it  began  in  the  beginning,  and  no 
doubt  before  the  matriarchate  period  women  were 
striving  toward  liberty,  only  to  lose  it  after  having 
for  a  while  dominated  man.  In  later  years  women 
such  as  Mary  Wollstonecraft,  but  more  obscure, 
strove  to  emancipate  themselves  from  the  thrall - 
dom  of  the  household.  The  aspiration  of  woman, 
139 


THE   DOWNFALL   OF  THE   HOME 

whether  Greek  courtesan,  French  worldling,  or 
English  factory  inspector,  has  always  been  to- 
ward equality  with  man,  perhaps  toward  mastery. 
And  man  has  always  stood  in  her  path  to  restrict 
her,  to  arrest  her  development  for  his  pleasure, 
as  does  to-day  the  Japanese  to  the  little  tree  which 
he  plants  in  a  pot.  The  clamor  of  to-day  against 
the  emancipated  woman  is  as  old  as  the  rebukes  of 
St.  Paul;  Moliere  gave  it  tongue  in  Les  Femmes 
Savantes,  when  he  made  the  bourgeois  say  to  his 
would-be  learned  wife : 

"Former  aux  bonnes  moeurs  l'esprit  de  ses  enfants, 
Faire  aller  son  menage,  avoir  l'oeil  sur  ses  gens 
Et  regler  la  depense  avec  economie 
Doit  etre  son  etude  et  sa  philosophie." 

Man  has  laid  down  only  three  occupations  : 
kirche,  kiiche,  kinder. 

Hence  the  revolt.  If  man  had  not  so  much 
desired  that  woman  should  be  housekeeper  and 
courtesan,  she  would  not  so  violently  have  re- 
belled against  him,  for  why  should  one  rebel 
until  somebody  says,  "Thou  shalt  " !  At  the 
words  "Thou  shalt",  rebellion  becomes  auto- 
matic, and,  so  long  as  woman  has  virility  in 
her,  so  will  it  be.  Still,  leaving  origins  alone, 
140 


THE   DOWNFALL   OF  THE   HOME 

and  considering  only  the  last  fifty  or  sixty  years 
of  our  history,  it  might  be  said  that  they  are 
divided  into  three  periods  : 

(a)  The  shiny  nose  and  virtue  period. 

(b)  The  powder-puff  and  possible  virtue  period. 

(c)  The  Russian  ballet  and  leopard-skin  period. 
There  are  exceptions,  qualifications,  occasional 

retrogressions,  but,  taking  it  roughly,  that  is  the 
history  of  English  womanhood  from  wax  fruit  to 
Bakst  designs.  There  were  crises,  such  as  the 
early  'eighties,  when  bloomers  came  in  and  women 
essayed  cigarettes,  and  felt  very  advanced  and 
sick;  when  they  joined  Ibsen  clubs  and  took  up 
Bernard  Shaw,  and  wore  eyeglasses  and  generally 
tried  to  be  men  without  succeeding  in  being  gentle- 
men. There  was  another  crisis  about  1906,  when 
suffrage  put  forward  in  England  its  first  violent 
claims.  That,  too,  was  abortive  in  a  sense,  as 
is  ironically  recorded  in  a  comic  song  popular  at 
the  time : 

"  Back,  back  to  the  office  she  went : 
The  secretary  was  a  perfect  gent." 

But  still,  in  a  rough  and  general  way,   there 
has  been  a  continual  and  growing  discontent  with 
the  heavy  weight  of  the  household,  the  complica- 
141 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF  THE  HOME 

tions  of  its  administration.  There  has  been  a 
drive  toward  freedom  which  has  affected  even  that 
most  conservative  of  all  animals,  the  male.  There 
have  been  conscious  rebellions  as  expressed,  for 
instance,  by  Nora  who  "slammed  the  door'';  by 
the  many  girls  who  decide  to  "live  their  own 
lives",  as  life  was  expounded  in  the  yellow-backs 
of  the  'nineties ;  by  the  growing  demand  for  entry 
into  the  professions ;  for  votes ;  for  admission  to 
the  legislatures.  There  is  nothing  irrelevant  in 
this ;  given  that  by  the  nature  of  her  position  in 
society  and  of  the  duties  intrusted  to  her  in  the 
household,  she  was  cut  off  from  all  other  fields  of 
human  activity,  it  may  be  said  that  every  attempt 
that  woman  has  made  to  share  in  any  activity 
that  lay  beyond  her  front  door  has  been  revolu- 
tionary and  directed  at  the  foundations  of  the 
English  household  system.  Whether  this  has  also 
been  the  case  in  America,  where  a  curious  type 
of  woman  has  been  evolved  —  pampered,  selfish, 
intelligent,  domineering,  and  wildly  pleasure- 
loving  —  I  cannot  tell.  Nor  is  it  my  business ; 
like  other  men,  the  Americans  have  the  wives 
they  deserve. 

But    behind    the    conscious    rebellions   are    the 
subtle   and,   in   a   way,   infinitely  more  powerful 
142 


THE   DOWNFALL  OF  THE   HOME 

unconscious  rebellions,  the  dull  discontents  of 
overworked  and  over-preoccupied  women ;  the 
weariness,  the  desire  for  pleasure  and  travel,  for 
change,  for  time  to  play  and  to  love,  and  —  what 
is  more  pathetic  —  for  time  just  to  sit  and  rest. 
The  epitaph  of  the  charwoman  — 

"Weep  for  me  not,  weep  for  me  never, 
I'm  going  to  do  nothing,  nothing  forever  — " 

embodies  pains  deep-buried  in  millions  of  women's 
hearts.  Most  people  do  not  know  that,  because 
women  never  smile  so  brightly  as  when  they  are 
unhappy.  Sometimes  I  suspect  that  public  pro- 
nouncements and  suffrage  manifestoes  have  had 
very  much  less  to  do  with  modern  upheavals  than 
these  slumberous  protests  against  the  multiplicity 
of  errands  and  the  intricacies  of  the  kitchen  range. 
Even  man  has  been  affected  by  the  change,  has 
begun  to  realize  that  it  is  quite  impossible  to  alter 
custom  while  leaving  custom  unaltered,  which,  as 
anybody  knows  who  reads  parliamentary  debates, 
is  mankind's  dearest  desire.  Changes  in  his 
habits  and  in  his  surroundings,  such  as  the  week- 
end, the  servant  problem,  the  restaurant,  the 
hotel;  all  these  have  been  separate  disruptive 
factors,  have  begun  to  bring  about  the  downfall 
143 


THE   DOWNFALL   OF   THE   HOME 

of  the  English  household.  I  do  not  know  that 
one  can  assign  a  predominant  place  to  any  one  of 
these  factors;  they  are  each  one  as  the  drop  of 
water  that,  joined  with  its  fellows,  wears  away 
stone.  Moreover,  in  socio-psychologic  investiga- 
tion it  is  often  found  that  what  appears  to  be  a 
cause  is  an  effect,  and  vice  versa.  For  instance, 
with  regard  to  restaurant  dining,  it  may  be  that 
people  frequent  restaurants  because  the  home 
cooking  is  bad,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  it  may  be 
that  home  cooking  has  become  bad  because  people 
have  neglected  it  as  they  found  it  easier  to  go  to 
the  restaurant.  This  attitude  of  mind  must 
qualify  the  conclusion  at  which  I  arrive,  and  it  is 
an  attitude  which  must  be  sedulously  cultivated 
by  any  one  who  wants  to  know  the  truth  instead 
of  wishing  merely  to  have  his  prejudices  confirmed. 
But,  all  allowances  made,  it  is  perfectly  clear 
that  the  first  group  of  disruptive  factors,  such  as 
the  restaurant  dinner,  the  week-end,  the  long  and 
frequent  holidays,  the  motor  car,  the  spread  of 
golf,  is  inimical  to  the  home  idea  and,  therefore, 
to  the  house  idea.  (Home  means  house,  and  does 
not  mean  flat,  for  which  see  further  on.)  The  home 
idea  is  complex ;  it  embraces  privacy,  possession ; 
it  implies  a  place  where  one  can  retreat,  be  master, 

144 


THE   DOWNFALL   OF  THE  HOME 

be  powerful  in  a  small  sphere,  take  off  one's  boots, 
be  sulky  or  pleasant,  as  one  likes.  It  involves, 
above  all,  a  place  where  one  does  not  hear  the 
neighbor's  piano,  or  the  neighbor's  baby,  or,  with 
luck,  the  neighbor's  cat ;  but  where,  on  the  other 
hand,  one's  own  piano,  one's  own  baby,  and  one's 
own  cat  are  raised  to  a  high  and  personal  pitch  of 
importance.  It  involves  everything  that  is  in- 
dividual —  one's  own  stationery  block,  one's  crest, 
or,  if  one  is  not  so  fortunate,  one's  monogram  upon 
the  plate.  If  the  S.P.C.A.  did  not  intervene,  I 
think  one  might  often  see  in  the  front  garden  a 
cat  branded  with  a  hot  iron:  " Thomas  Jones. 
His  Cat."  It  is  the  rallying-point  of  domestic 
virtue,  the  origin  of  domestic  tyranny.  It  is  the 
place  where  public  opinion  cannot  see  you  and 
where,  therefore,  you  may  behave  badly.  Most 
wife  beaters  live  in  houses ;  in  flats  they  would  be 
afraid  of  the  opinion  of  the  hall  porter.  And  yet 
the  home  is  not  without  its  charm  and  its  nobility, 
for  its  bricks  and  mortar  enshrine  a  spirit  that  is 
worshiped  and  for  which  much  may  be  sacrificed. 
Cigars  have  been  given  up  so  that  the  home  might 
have  a  new  coat  of  paint ;  amusements,  holidays, 
food  sometimes  —  all  these  have  been  sacrificed 
so  that,  well  railed  off  from  the  outside  world  by  a 
145 


THE   DOWNFALL  OF  THE  HOME 

front  garden,  if  possible  by  a  back  garden,  too  — 
or,  still  more  delightful,  far  from  the  next  house 
—  a  little  social  cosmos  might  be  maintained. 
So  far  has  this  gone  in  the  north  of  England  that 
many  people  who  could  well  afford  servants  will 
not  have  them  because,  as  they  say,  they  cannot 
bear  strangers  in  the  house.  And  very  desirable 
houses  in  the  suburbs  of  London,  with  old,  walled 
gardens,  have  been  given  up  because  it  was  un- 
bearable to  take  tea  under  the  eyes  of  passengers 
on  the  top  of  the  motor  busses. 

The  home  spirit,  however,  is  not  content  merely 
with  coats  of  paint  and  doilies ;  it  demands  mental 
as  well  as  material  worship.  It  demands  impor- 
tance ;  it  insists  that  it  is  home,  sweet  home,  and 
that  there  is  no  place  like  it  (which  is  one  comfort) ; 
that  it  is  the  last  thought  of  the  drowning  sailor; 
that  the  trapper,  lost  in  the  deepest  forests  of 
Canada,  sees  rising  in  the  smoke  of  his  lonely 
camp  fire  a  delicious  vision  of  Aunt  Maria's  ma- 
genta curtains.  It  lays  down  that  it  is  wrong  to 
leave  it,  quite  apart  from  the  question  of  burglars ; 
it  has  invented  scores  of  phrases  to  justify  other- 
wise unpleasant  husbands  who  had  "  given  a  good 
home"  to  their  wives;  phrases  to  censure  revolt- 
ing daughters  "who  had  good  homes,  and  what 

146 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF  THE  HOME 

more  could  they  want?"  It  has  frowned  upon 
everything  that  was  outside  itself,  for  it  could  not 
see  anything  that  was  not  itself.  It  has  hated 
theaters,  concerts,  dances,  lectures,  every  form  of 
amusement ;  and,  as  it  has  to  bear  them,  likes  to 
refer  to  them  archly  as  debauches,  or  going  on 
the  razzle-dazzle,  or  the  ran-dan,  according  to 
period.  It  has  powerfully  allied  itself  with  the 
pulpit  and,  in  impious  circles,  with  fancy  work  and 
crochet ;  it  has  enlisted  a  considerable  portion  of 
the  Royal  Academy  to  depict  it  in  various  scenes 
for  which  the  recipe  is :  One  tired  man  with  a 
sunny  smile  returning  to  his  home ;  one  delighted 
wife;  suitable  number  of  ebullient  children  and, 
inevitably,  a  dog.  The  dog  varies.  In  England 
they  generally  put  in  a  terrier,  in  war  time  a  bull- 
dog; in  Germany  it  may  be  a  dachshund;  and 
in  other  countries  it  is  another  kind  of  dog,  but 
it  is  always  the  same  idea. 

And  so  it  is  not  wonderful  that  the  home  has 
looked  censoriously  upon  everything  that  took 
people  away  from  its  orbit.  Likewise  it  is  not 
wonderful  that  people  have  fled  to  anything  avail- 
able so  as  to  escape  the  charmed  circle.  The 
week-end  is  in  general  a  very  over-rated  amuse- 
ment, for  it  consists  mainly  in  packing  and  pre- 
147 


THE  DOWNFALL   OF   THE   HOME 

paring  to  catch  a  train,  then  thinking  of  packing 
and  catching  a  train,  then  packing  and  catching  a 
train ;  but  still  the  week-end  amounts  to  a  deser- 
tion, and  hardly  a  month  passes  without  a  divine 
laying  of  savage  hands  upon  the  excursion.  There 
was  a  time  when  holidays  themselves  were  looked 
upon  as  audacious  breaches  of  the  conventions. 
In  the  early  nineteenth  century  nobody  went  to 
Brighton  except  the  Regent  and  the  smart  set; 
even  in  the  Thackerayan  period  people  did  not 
think  it  necessary  to  leave  London  in  August,  and 
when  they  took  the  Grand  Tour  they  were  bent 
on  improving  their  minds.  The  Kickleburys  could 
not  go  up  the  Rhine  without  a  powerful  feeling  of 
self-consciousness;  I  think  they  felt  that  they 
were  outraging  the  Victorian  virtues,  so  they  had 
to  make  up  for  it  by  taking  a  guide,  who  for  four 
or  five  weeks  lectured  them  day  and  night  upon 
the  ruins  of  Godesberg.  All  this  was  opposed  to 
the  spirit  of  the  home,  just  as  anything  which  is 
outside  the  home  is  opposed  to  the  spirit  of  the 
home,  as  was,  for  instance,  every  dance  that  has 
ever  been  known.  In  the  Observer,  in  1820,  ap- 
peared a  poem  expressing  horror  and  disgust  of 
the  waltz,  and,  curiously  enough,  very  much  in 
the  same  terms  as  the  diatribes  in  the  American 

148 


THE   DOWNFALL   OF  THE   HOME 

papers  of  1914  against  the  turkey  trot  and  the 
bunny  hug.  When  the  polka  came  in,  in  the 
middle  of  the  nineteenth  century,  good  people 
clustered  to  see  it  danced,  just  like  the  more  recent 
tango,  and  it  was  considered  very  fast.  All  this 
may  appear  somewhat  irrelevant,  but  my  case  is 
mainly  that  the  old  attitude,  now  decaying,  is 
that  anything  that  happened  outside  the  home, 
whether  sport  or  amusement,  was  anything  be- 
tween faintly  and  violently  evil.  The  old  ideal  of 
home  was  concentrated  in  Sunday :  a  long  night ; 
heavy  breakfast ;  church ;  walk  in  the  park ; 
heavy  dinner,  including  roast  beef;  profound 
sleep  in  the  dining  room ;  heavy  tea ;  then  noth- 
ing whatever ;  church ;  heavy  supper ;  nothing 
whatever ;  then  sleep.  There  is  not  much  of  this 
left,  and  from  the  moment  when  Sunday  concerts 
began  and  the  picture  galleries  were  opened,  when 
chess  was  played  and  the  newspaper  read,  the  old 
solidities  of  the  home  trembled,  for  the  home  was 
an  edifice  from  which  one  could  not  take  one  stone. 
In  chorus  with  the  cry  for  new  pleasures,  the 
reaction  against  the  old  discomfort,  came  a  more 
powerful  influence  still,  because  it  was  direct  — 
the  servant  problem.  The  Americans  know  this 
question,  I  think,  better  even  than  the  British, 
149 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF  THE  HOME 

for  in  their  country  a  violent  democracy  rejects 
domestic  service  and  compels,  I  believe,  the  use 
of  recent  emigrants  from  old  enslaved  Europe  who 
have  not  yet  breathed  the  aggressive  and  ambitious 
air  that  has  touched  the  Stars  and  Stripes.  In 
Great  Britain  the  crisis  is  not  yet,  and  it  may  never 
come,  for  this  is  not  the  English  way.  In  England 
we  are  aware  of  a  crisis  only  fifty  years  later, 
because  for  that  half-century  we  have  success- 
fully pretended  that  there  was  no  crisis.  So  we 
come  in  just  in  time  for  the  reaction,  and  say: 
" There  you  are.  I  told  you  nothing  was  changed." 
Yet,  so  persistent  is  the  servant  problem  that 
even  England  has  had  to  take  some  notice  of  it. 
As  Mr.  Wells  said,  the  supply  of  rough,  hard- 
working girls  began  to  shrink.  It  shrank  because 
so  many  opportunities  for  the  employment  of 
women  were  offered  by  the  factories  which  arose 
in  England  in  the  'forties  and  the  'fifties,  by  the 
demand  for  waitresses,  for  shorthand  writers, 
typists,  shopgirls,  elementary  schoolmistresses,  etc. 
The  Education  Act  of  1870  gave  the  young  Eng- 
lish girls  of  that  day  a  violent  shock,  for  it  in- 
formed them  of  the  existence  of  Paris,  assisted 
them  toward  the  piano.  And  then  came  the 
development  of  the  factory  system,  the  spread  of 

150 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF  THE  HOME 

cheapness;  with  the  rise  in  wages  came  a  rising 
desire  for  pretty,  cheap  things  almost  as  pretty 
as  the  dear  ones;  substitutes  for  costly  stuffs 
were  found ;  compositions  replaced  ivory,  mer- 
cerized cotton  rivaled  silk,  and  little  by  little  the 
young  girl  of  the  people  discovered  that  with  a 
little  cleverness  she  could  look  quite  as  well  as 
the  one  whom  her  mother  called  "Madam"; 
so  she  ceased  to  call  her  " Madam."  Labor  daily 
grows  more  truculent,  so  there  is  no  knowing 
what  she  will  call  the  ex-Madam  next;  but  one 
thing  is  certain,  and  that  is  that  she  will  not  serve 
her.  She  will  not,  because  she  looks  upon  service 
as  ignominious;  she  has  her  own  pride;  she  will 
not  tell  you  that  she  is  in  a  shop,  but  that  she  is 
"in  business";  if  she  is  "in  service",  often  she 
will  say  nothing  about  it  at  all,  for  the  other  girls, 
who  work  their  eleven  hours  a  day  for  a  few  shil- 
lings a  week,  despise  her.  They  at  least  have 
fixed  hours  and  they  do  not  "live  in"  ;  when  they 
have  done  their  work  they  are  free.  They  may 
have  had  less  to  eat  that  day  than  the  comfortable 
parlor-maid,  and  maybe  they  have  less  in  their 
pockets,  but  they  are  free,  and  they  do  not  hesitate 
to  show  their  contempt  to  the  helot.  I  think  that 
new  pride  has  done  as  much  as  anything  to  crush 
151 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF  THE  HOME 

the  old,  large,  unwieldy  home,  for  its  four  stories 
and  its  vast  basement  needed  many  steady,  hard- 
working slaves,  who  only  spoke  when  they  were 
spoken  to  and  always  obeyed.  It  is  not  that 
mistresses  were  bad;  some  were  and  some  were 
not,  but  from  the  modern  girl's  point  of  view 
they  were  all  bad  because  they  had  power  at  any 
time  of  day  or  night  to  demand  service,  to  impose 
tasks  that  were  not  contracted  for,  to  forbid  the 
house  to  the  servant's  friends,  to  make  her  loves 
difficult,  to  forbid  her  even  to  speak  to  a  man. 
Whether  the  mistress  so  behaved  did  not  matter ; 
she  had  the  power,  and  in  a  society  growingly  in- 
dividual, growingly  democratic,  that  was  bound 
to  become  a  heavy  yoke. 

And  so,  very  slowly,  the  modern  evolution 
began.  The  first  to  go  were  the  immense  houses 
of  Kensington,  Paddington,  Bayswater,  Blooms- 
bury,  —  those  old  houses  within  hail  of  Hyde 
Park,  —  which  once  held  large  families,  all  of 
them  anxious  to  live  not  too  far  from  the  Court. 
They  fell  because  it  was  almost  impossible  to 
afford  enough  servants  to  keep  in  order  their  three 
or  four  reception  rooms,  and  their  eight,  ten, 
twelve  bedrooms ;  they  fell  because  the  birth 
rate  shrank,  and  the  large  families  of  the  early 

152 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF   THE  HOME 

nineteenth  century  became  exceptional;  they  fell 
also  because  the  old  rigidity,  or  rather  the  state- 
liness,  of  the  home  was  vanishing;  because  the 
lady  of  the  house  ventured  to  have  tea  in  her 
drawing-room  when  there  were  no  callers,  and 
little  by  little  came  to  leave  newspapers  about  in 
it  and  to  smoke  in  it.  With  the  difficulties  of  the 
old  houses  came  a  demand  for  something  smaller, 
requiring  less  labor.  This  accounts  for  the  villas, 
of  which  some  four  hundred  thousand  have  been 
built  in  the  suburbs  of  London,  in  the  villages 
London  has  absorbed.  They  are  atrocious  imi- 
tations of  the  most  debased  Elizabethan  style; 
they  show  concrete  where  they  should  use  stone, 
but,  as  their  predecessors  showed  stucco,  they  are 
not  much  worse.  They  exhibit  painted  black 
stripes  where  there  should  be  beams;  they  have 
sloping  roofs,  gables,  dormer  windows,  everything 
cunningly  arranged  to  make  as  many  corners  as 
possible  where  no  chair  can  stand.  They  have 
horrid  little  gardens  where  the  builder  has  buried 
many  broken  bricks,  sardine  tins,  and  old  hats ; 
they  represent  the  taste  of  the  twentieth  century ; 
they  are  quite  abominable.  But  still  the  fact  re- 
mains that  they  are  infinitely  smaller,  more  man- 
ageable, more  intelligently  planned  than  the 
153 


THE  DOWNFALL   OF  THE  HOME 

spacious  old  houses  of  the  past,  where  every 
black  cupboard  bred  the  cockroach  and  the  mouse. 
They  are  easy  to  warm  and  easy  to  clean ;  their 
windows  are  not  limited  by  the  old  window  tax; 
they  have  bathrooms  even  when  their  rent  is 
only  one  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  a  year;  and 
especially  they  have  no  basement.  The  disap- 
pearance of  the  basement  is  one  of  the  most  sig- 
nificant aspects  of  the  downfall  of  the  old  household, 
for  it  was  essentially  the  servants'  floor,  where 
they  could  be  kept  apart  from  their  masters, 
maintaining  their  own  sports  and  the  mysterious 
customs  of  a  strange  people ;  when  the  door  of 
the  kitchen  stairs  was  shut,  one  would  keep  out 
everything  connected  with  the  servants,  except 
perhaps  the  smell  of  the  roast  leg  of  mutton. 
That  did  not  matter,  for  that  was  homelike.  The 
basement  was  a  vestige  of  feudal  English  society; 
it  was  brother  to  the  servants'  quarters  and  the 
servants'  hall.  Now  it  is  gone.  In  many  places  the 
tradesmen's  entrance  has  vanished,  and  the  cabbage 
comes  to  the  front  door.  The  sacred  suppressions 
are  no  more,  and  in  a  developing  democracy  the 
master  and  mistress  of  the  house  stately  dine,  while 
on  the  other  side  of  a  wall  about  an  inch  thick  Jane 
can  be  heard  conversing  with  the  policeman. 
154 


THE   DOWNFALL  OF  THE   HOME 

The  growth  of  the  small  house  has  never  stopped 
during  the  last  forty  or  fifty  years.  A  builder  in 
the  southwest  of  London,  of  whom  I  made  in- 
quiries, told  me  that  he  had  erected  four  hundred 
and  twenty  houses,  and  that  not  one  of  them  had  a 
basement ;  this  form  of  architecture  had  not  even 
occurred  to  him.  I  have  also  visited  very  many 
homes  in  the  suburbs  of  London,  and  I  have 
looked  in  vain  for  the  old  precincts  of  the  serving 
maid.  The  small  house  has  powerfully  affected 
the  old  individual  attitude  of  home,  for  the  hostile 
dignity  of  the  past  cannot  survive  when  one  man 
mows  the  lawn  and  the  other  clips  the  roses,  each 
in  his  own  garden,  separated  only  by  three  sticks 
and  some  barbed  wire.  In  detached  houses  it  is 
worse,  for  they  are  now  so  close  together  that  in 
certain  architectural  conditions  preliminaries  are 
required  before  one  can  take  a  private  bath.  The 
whole  direction  of  domestic  architecture  is  against 
the  individual  and  for  the  group.  The  modern 
home  takes  away  even  the  old  stores;  there  are 
no  more  pickle  cupboards  and  jam  cupboards, 
and  hardly  linen  cupboards.  Why  should  there 
be  when  jam  and  pickles  come  from  the  grocer, 
and  few  men  have  more  than  twelve  shirts  ?  There 
is  not  even  a  store  for  coal.  Some  years  ago  I 
155 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF  THE  HOME 

lived  in  a  house  that  was  built  in  1820,  and  its 
coal  cellar  held  eight  tons;  I  now  inhabit  one, 
built  in  i860,  in  which  I  can  accommodate  four 
tons;  the  house  now  being  built  in  the  suburbs 
cannot  receive  more  than  one  ton.  The  evolution 
of  the  coal  cellar  is  a  little  the  evolution  of  English 
society  from  the  time  when  every  man  had  to  live  a 
good  deal  for  himself,  until  slightly  better  distri- 
bution made  it  possible  for  him  to  combine  with 
his  fellows.  He  need  not  now  store  coal,  for  there 
is  a  service  of  coal  to  his  doorstep.  Besides,  the 
offspring  of  coal  are  expelling  their  ancestor;  gas 
and  electricity,  both  centrally  supplied  from  a  single 
source,  are  sapping  the  old  hearthstone  that  was 
fed  by  one  small  family,  and  for  that  family  alone 
glowed.  A  continual  socialization  has  come  about, 
and  it  is  not  going  to  stop.  What  is  done  in  com- 
mon is  on  the  whole  better  done,  more  cheaply 
done.  But  what  is  done  in  common  is  hostile  to 
the  old  home  spirit,  because  the  principle  of  the 
home  spirit  is  that  anything  done  in  common  is  — 
well,  common ! 

As  for  the  old  houses  of  fifteen  to  sixteen  rooms, 

they  have  had  to  accommodate  themselves  to  the 

new    conditions.     First    they    tried    to    maintain 

themselves  by  reducing  their  rents.     I  know  of  a 

156 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF  THE  HOME 

case,  in  Courtfield  Gardens,  where  a  house  leased 
twenty-six  years  ago  at  one  thousand  dollars  a 
year,  was  leased  again  about  ten  years  ago  at 
seven  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  a  year,  and  is 
now  being  offered  at  five  hundred  dollars  a  year. 
The  owner  does  not  want  his  premises  turned  into 
a  boarding  house,  but  he  cannot  find  a  private 
tenant,  because  hardly  anybody  nowadays  can 
manage  five  floors  and  a  basement.  In  my  own 
district,  where  the  houses  tower  up  to  heaven,  I 
see  the  process  at  work,  —  rents  falling,  pitiful 
attempts  of  the  landlords  to  prevent  their  houses 
from  turning  into  maisonnettes  and  boarding 
houses,  to  prevent  the  general  decay.  But  they 
are  beaten.  The  vast  Victorian  houses  within 
three  miles  of  Charing  Cross  are,  one  by  one,  being 
cut  up  into  flats;  in  the  unfashionable  districts 
they  are  being  used  for  tenements ;  and  there  are 
splendid  old  houses  in  the  neighborhood  of  Blooms- 
bury,  where  in  the  day  of  Dickens  lived  the  fash- 
ionables, which  now  house  half  a  dozen  working- 
class  families  and  their  lodgers.  There  is  one  of 
these  old  glories  near  Lamb's  Conduit  Street, 
where  a  Polish  furrier  and  his  six  unwashed  assist- 
ants work  under  a  ceiling  sown  with  sprawling 
nymphs,  while  melancholic  and  chipped  golden 
i57 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF  THE  HOME 

lions'  heads  look  down  from  either  side  of  a  once 
splendid  Georgian  mantelpiece.  It  is  very  re- 
actionary of  me,  I  am  afraid,  but  I  cannot  help 
feeling  it  a  pity  that  this  old  house,  where  would 
suitably  walk  the  ghost  of  Brinsley  Sheridan, 
must  be  one  of  the  eggs  broken  to  make  the 
omelette  of  the  future. 

But  these  old  houses  must  go.  Why  should  one 
preserve  an  old  house?  One  does  not  preserve 
one's  old  boots.  The  old  houses  have  been  seized 
by  the  current  of  revolt  against  the  home;  they 
have  mostly  become  boarding  and  apartment 
houses.  This  is  not  only  because  their  owners 
do  not  know  what  to  do  with  them ;  one  does  not 
run  a  boarding  house  unless  it  pays,  and  so  evi- 
dently there  has  been  a  growing  demand  for  the 
boarding  house.  Boarding  houses  fail,  but  for 
every  one  that  fails  two  rise  up,  and  there  is  hardly 
a  street  in  London  that  has  not  its  boarding  house, 
or  at  least  its  apartment  house.  There  are  several 
in  Park  Lane  itself;  there  is  even  one  whose 
lodgers  may  look  into  the  gardens  of  Buckingham 
Palace.  I  do  not  know  how  many  boarding  houses 
there  are  in  London,  for  no  statistics  distinguish 
properly  between  the  boarding  house,  the  apart- 
ment house,  the  private  hotel,  the  hotel,  and  the 

158 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF  THE  HOME 

tavern.  But,  evidently,  the  increase  is  continu- 
ous, and  part  of  the  explanation  is  to  be  found 
elsewhere  than  in  the  traveler.  Of  course,  the 
traveler  has  enormously  increased,  but  he  alone 
cannot  account  for  the  scores  of  thousands  of 
people  who  pass  their  years  in  apartment  and 
boarding  houses.  They  live  there  for  various 
reasons  —  because  they  cling  to  the  old  family 
idea  and  think  to  find  "a  home  from  home"; 
because  they  cannot  afford  to  run  separate  es- 
tablishments;  and  very  many  because  they  are 
tired  of  running  them,  tired  of  the  plumber,  tired 
of  the  housemaid.  There  are  thousands  of  families 
in  London,  quite  well-to-do,  who  prefer  to  live  in 
boarding  houses;  they  hate  the  boarding  house, 
but  they  hate  it  less  than  home.  They  feel  less 
tied ;  they  have  less  furniture ;  they  like  to  feel 
that  their  furniture  is  in  store  where  they  can  for- 
get all  about  it.  They  have  lost  part  of  their  old 
love  for  Aunt  Maria's  magenta  curtains  —  the 
home  idea  has  become  less  significant  to  them. 
And  this  applies  also  to  hotels.  The  increase  of 
hotels  in  London,  in  every  provincial  city,  all 
over  the  world,  is  not  entirely  explained  by  the 
traveler,  though,  by  the  way,  the  increase  in 
traveling  is  a  sign  of  the  decay  of  the  home.  The 
159 


THE   DOWNFALL   OF  THE  HOME 

old  idea,  "  You've  got  a  good  home  and  you've  got 
to  stay  there,"  suffers  whenever  a  member  of  the 
home  leaves  it  for  any  reason  other  than  the  vir- 
tuous pursuit  of  his  business.  All  over  the  center 
of  London,  in  Piccadilly,  along  Hyde  Park,  in 
Bloomsbury,  hotels  have  risen  —  the  Piccadilly, 
the  new  Ritz,  the  Park  View,  the  Coburg,  the 
Cadogan,  the  Waldorf,  the  Jermyn  Court,  the 
Marble  Arch,  so  many  that  in  some  places  they 
are  beginning  to  form  a  row.  And  still  they  rise. 
An  enormous  hotel  is  being  built  opposite  Green 
Park ;  another  is  projected  at  Hyde  Park  Corner ; 
the  Strand  Palace  is  open,  and  at  the  Regent 
Palace  there  are,  I  understand,  fourteen  hundred 
bedrooms.  The  position  is  that  a  proportion  of 
London's  population  is  beginning  to  live  in  these 
hotels  without  servants  of  their  own,  without 
furniture  of  their  own,  without  houses  of  their 
own.  A  more  detached,  a  freer  spirit  is  invading 
them,  and  a  desire  to  get  all  they  can  out  of  life 
while  they  can,  instead  of  solemnly  worshiping  the 
Englishman's  castle. 

It  does  not  come  easily,  and  it  does  not  come 
quickly.  During  the  last  twenty-five  years  most 
of  the  blocks  of  flats  to  be  found  in  London  have 
risen,  with  their  villainously  convenient  lifts  for 

1 60 


THE  DOWNFALL   OF   THE  HOME 

passengers  and  their  new-fangled  lifts  for  dust 
bins  and  coal,  with  their  electricity  and  their 
white  paint,  and  other  signs  of  emancipation. 
They  were  not  popular  when  they  came,  and  they 
are  disliked  by  the  older  generation;  it  is  still  a 
little  vicious  to  live  in  a  West  End  flat.  And 
when  the  younger  generation  points  out  that 
flats  are  so  convenient  because  you  can  leave  them, 
the  older  generation  shakes  its  head  and  wonders 
why  one  should  want  to.  In  a  future,  which  I 
glimpse  clearly  enough,  I  see  many  more  causes 
of  disquiet  for  the  older  generation,  and  I  wonder 
with  a  certain  fear  whether  I,  too,  shall  not  be 
dismayed  when  I  become  the  older  generation. 
For  the  destruction  of  the  old  home  is  extending 
now  much  farther  than  bricks  and  mortar.  It  is 
touching  the  center  of  human  life,  the  kitchen. 
There  are  now  in  London  quite  a  number  of  flats, 
such  as,  I  think,  Queen  Anne's  Mansions,  St. 
James's  Court,  Artillery  Mansions,  where  the 
tenants  live  in  agreeable  suites  and  either  take 
their  meals  in  the  public  restaurant  or  have  them 
brought  up  to  their  flat.  The  difficulty  of  service 
is  being  reduced.  The  sixty  households  are  be- 
ginning to  do  without  the  sixty  cooks,  and  never 
use  more  than  a  few  dozen  at  a  time  of  their  two 
161 


THE    DOWNFALL   OF   THE   HOME 

hundred  pieces  of  crockery.  There  are  no  more 
tradesmen,  nor  is  there  any  ordering;  there  is  a 
menu  and  a  telephone.  There  are  no  more  heated 
interviews  with  the  cook,  and  no  more  notices 
given  ten  minutes  before  the  party,  but  a  chat 
with  a  manager  who  has  the  manners  and  the  tact 
of  an  ambassador.  There  is  no  more  home  work 
in  these  places. 

I  think  these  blocks  of  flats  point  the  way  to  the 
future  much  more  clearly  than  the  hotels  and  the 
boarding  houses,  for  those  are  only  makeshifts. 
Generally  speaking,  boarding  houses  are  bad  and 
uncomfortable,  for  the  landlady  is  sometimes 
drunk  and  generally  ill-tempered,  the  servants 
are  usually  dirty  and  always  overworked;  the 
furniture  clamors  for  destruction  by  the  city 
council.  The  new  system  —  blocks  of  flats  with 
a  central  restaurant  —  will  probably,  in  a  more 
or  less  modified  form,  be  the  home  of  new  British 
generations.  I  conceive  the  future  homes  of  the 
people  as  separate  communities,  say  blocks  of  a 
hundred  flats  or  perhaps  more,  standing  in  a 
common  garden  which  will  be  kept  up  .  by  the 
estate.  Each  flat  will  probably  have  one  room 
for  each  inhabitant,  so  as  to  secure  the  privacy 
which    is  very  necessary  even   to   those  who  no 

162 


THE   DOWNFALL   OF   THE   HOME 

longer  believe  in  the  home  idea ;  it  will  also  have 
a  common  room  where  privacy  can  be  dispensed 
with.  Its  furniture  will  be  partly  personal,  but 
not  very,  for  a  movement  which  is  developing  in 
America  will  extend,  and  we  too  in  England  may 
be  provided,  as  are  to-day  the  more  fortunate 
Americans,  with  an  abundance  of  cupboards  and 
dressers  ready  fixed  to  the  walls.  There  will  be 
no  coal,  but  only  electricity  and  gas,  run  from  the 
central  plant.  There  will  be  no  kitchens,  but  one 
central  kitchen,  and  a  central  dining  room,  run 
—  and  this  is  very  important  —  by  a  committee  of 
tenants. 

That  committee  will  appoint  and  control  cooks 
and  all  servants ;  it  will  buy  all  provisions,  and  it 
will  buy  them  cheaply,  for  it  will  purchase  by  the 
hundredweight.  It  will  control  the  central  laundry, 
and  a  paid  laundry  maid  will  check  the  lists  — 
there  will  no  longer  be,  as  once  upon  a  time  on 
Saturday  evenings,  a  hundred  persons  checking  a 
hundred  lists.  It  is  even  quite  possible  that  the 
central  organization  may  darn  socks.  The  ser- 
vants will  no  longer  be  slaves,  personally  attached 
to  a  few  persons,  their  chattel;  they  will  be  day 
workers,  laboring  eight  hours,  without  any  master 
save  their  duty.  The  whole  system  of  the  house- 
163 


THE   DOWNFALL   OF   THE   HOME 

hold  will  be  grouped  for  the  purpose  of  buying 
and  distributing  everything  that  is  needed  at  any 
hour.  There  will  be  no  more  personal  shopping; 
the  wholesale  cleaner  will  call  on  certain  days 
without  being  told  to;  the  communistic  window 
cleaners  will  dispose  of  every  window  on  a  given 
day;  there  may  even  be  in  the  garden  a  com- 
munistic system  of  dog  kennels.  I  have  no  pro- 
posal for  controlling  cats,  for  I  understand  that 
no  man  can  do  that  .  .  .  but  then  there  will  be 
no  mice  in  those  days. 

I  think  I  will  close  upon  that  phrase:  There 
will  be  no  mice  in  those  days.  For  somehow  the 
industrious  mouse,  scuffling  behind  the  loose 
wainscoting  over  the  rotten  boards,  is  to  me 
curiously  significant  of  the  old,  hostile  order, 
when  every  man  jealously  held  what  was  his  own 
and  determined  that  it  should  so  remain  —  dirty, 
insanitary,  tiresome,  labor-making,  dull,  inex- 
pressibly ugly,  inexpressibly  inimical  to  anything 
fresh  and  free,  providing  that  it  was  wholly  and 
sacredly  his  own. 


164 


VI 

THE  BREAK-UP  OF  THE   FAMILY 


As  with  the  home,  so  with  the  family.  It  would 
be  strange  indeed  if  a  stained  shell  were  to  hold  a 
sound  nut.  All  the  events  of  the  last  century  — 
the  development  of  the  factory  system,  the  Married 
Women's  Property  Act,  the  birth  of  Mr.  Bernard 
Shaw,  the  entry  of  woman  into  professions,  the 
discovery  of  co-education  and  of  education  itself, 
eugenics,  Christian  Science,  new  music  halls  and 
halfpenny  papers,  the  Russian  ballet,  cheap  travel, 
woman  suffrage,  apartment  houses  —  all  this 
change  and  stress  has  lowered  the  status  of  one 
whom  Pliny  admired  —  the  father  of  a  family. 
The  family  itself  tends  to  disappear,  and  it  is 
many  years  since  letters  appeared  in  The  Times 
over  the  signature,  " Mother  of  Six."  The  family 
is  smaller,  and,  strangely  enough,  it  is  sweeter 
tempered :  would  it  be  fair  to  conclude,  as  might 
an  Irishman,  that  it  would  agree  perfectly  if  it 
disappeared  ? 

165 


THE   BREAK-UP  OF  THE   FAMILY 

I  do  not  think  that  the  family  will  completely 
disappear  any  more  than  scarlet  fever  or  the  tax 
collector.  But  certainly  it  will  change  in  char- 
acter, and  its  evolution  already  points  toward  its 
new  form.  The  old-fashioned  family  sickened 
because  it  was  a  compulsory  grouping.  The  wife 
cleaved  unto  her  husband  because  he  paid  the 
bills;  the  children  cleaved  unto  their  parents 
because  they  must  cleave  unto  something.  There 
was  no  chance  of  getting  out,  for  there  was  nothing 
to  get  out  to.  For  the  girl,  especially,  some  fifty 
years  ago,  to  escape  from  the  family  into  the  world 
was  much  the  same  thing  as  burgling  a  peniten- 
tiary ;  so  she  stayed,  compulsorily  grouped.  Per- 
sonally, I  think  all  kinds  of  compulsory  groupings 
bad.  If  one  is  compelled  to  do  a  thing,  one  hates 
it;  possibly  the  dead  warriors  in  the  Elysian 
Fields  have  by  this  time  taken  a  violent  dislike  to 
compulsory  chariot  races,  and  absolutely  detest 
their  endless  rest  on  moss-grown  banks  and 
their  diet  of  honey.  I  do  not  want  to  stress 
the  idea  too  far,  but  I  doubt  whether  the 
denizens  of  the  Elysian  Fields,  after  so  many  cen- 
turies, can  tolerate  one  another  any  more,  for  they 
are  compelled  to  live  all  together  in  this  Paradise, 
and  nothing  conceivable  will  ever  get  them  out. 
166 


THE   BREAK-UP  OF  THE   FAMILY 

Some  groupings  are  worse  than  others,  and  I 
incline  to  think  that  difference  of  age  has  most  to 
do  with  the  chafe  of  family  life.  For  man  is  a 
sociable  animal ;  he  loves  his  fellows,  and  so  one 
wonders  why  he  should  so  generally  detest  his 
relations.  There  are  minor  reasons.  Relation- 
ship amounts  to  a  license  to  be  rude,  to  the  right 
to  exact  respect  from  the  young  and  service  from 
the  old ;  there  is  the  fact  that,  however  high  you 
may  rise  in  the  world,  your  aunt  will  never  see  it. 
There  is  also  the  fact  that  if  your  aunt  does  see 
it,  she  brags  of  it  behind  your  back  and  insults 
you  about  it  to  your  face.  There  is  all  that,  but 
still  I  believe  that  one  could  to  a  certain  extent 
agree  with  one's  relations  if  one  met  only  those 
who  are  of  one's  own  age,  for  compulsory  groupings 
of  people  of  the  same  age  are  not  always  unpleas- 
ant ;  boys  are  happiest  at  school,  and  there  is  fine 
fellowship  and  much  merriment  in  armies.  On 
the  other  hand,  there  often  reigns  a  peculiar  dis- 
like in  offices.  I  do  not  want  to  conclude  too 
rashly,  but  I  cannot  help  being  struck  by  the  fact 
that  in  a  school  or  in  an  army  the  differences  of  age 
are  very  small,  while  in  an  office  or  a  family  they  are 
considerable.  Add  on  to  the  difference  of  age  com- 
pulsory intercourse,  and  you  have  the  seeds  of  hatred. 
167 


THE   BREAK-UP  OF  THE   FAMILY 

This  applies  particularly  where  the  units  of  a 
family  are  adult.  The  child  loves  the  grown-ups 
because  he  admires  them ;  a  little  later  he  finds 
them  out ;  still  a  little  later,  he  lets  them  see  that 
he  has  found  them  out,  and  then  family  life  begins. 
In  many  cases  it  is  a  quite  terrible  life,  and  the 
more  united  the  family  is  the  more  it  resembles 
the  union  between  the  shirt  of  Nessus  and  Hercules 's 
back.  But  it  must  be  endured  because  we  have  no 
alternative.  I  think  of  cases :  of  such  a  one  as 
that  of  a  father  and  mother,  respectively  sixty-five 
and  sixty,  who  have  two  sons,  one  of  whom  ran 
away  to  Australia  with  a  barmaid,  while  the  other 
lived  on  his  sisters'  patrimony  and  regrettably 
stayed  at  home;  they  have  four  daughters,  two 
of  whom  have  revolted  to  the  extent  of  earning 
their  living,  but  spend  the  whole  of  their  holidays 
with  the  old  people ;  the  other  two  are  unmarried 
because  the  father,  imbued  with  the  view  that  his 
daughters  were  too  good  for  any  man,  refused  to 
have  any  man  in  the  house.  There  is  another 
couple  in  my  mind,  who  have  five  children,  four 
of  whom  live  at  home.  I  think  I  will  describe  this 
family  by  quoting  one  of  the  father's  pronounce- 
ments:  "  There's  only  one  opinion  in  this  house, 
and   that's  mine!"     I   think   of   other   cases,   of 

168 


THE  BREAK-UP  OF  THE  FAMILY 

three  sisters  who  have  each  an  income  of  two 
hundred  dollars  a  year  on  which  they  would,  of 
course,  find  it  very  difficult  to  live  separately. 
The  total  income  of  six  hundred  dollars  a  year 
enables  them  to  live  —  but  together.  The  eldest 
loves  cats;  the  next  hates  cats,  but  loves  dogs; 
this  zoological  quarrel  is  the  chief  occupation  of 
the  household;  the  third  sister's  duty  is  to  keep 
the  cats  and  dogs  apart.  Here  we  have  the  com- 
pulsory grouping;  I  believe  that  this  lies  at  the 
root  of  disunion  in  that  united  family. 

The  age  problem  is  twofold.  It  must  not  be 
thought  that  I  hold  a  brief  against  old  age,  though, 
being  myself  young,  I  tend  to  dislike  old  age  as  I 
shall  probably  dislike  youth  by  and  by.  On  the 
whole,  the  attitude  of  old  age  is  tyrannical.  I 
have  heard  dicta  as  interesting  as  the  one  which 
I  quote  a  few  lines  above.  I  have  heard  say  a 
mother  to  a  young  man,  "You  ought  to  feel  affec- 
tion for  me";  another,  "It  should  be  enough  for 
you  that  this  is  my  wish."  That  is  natural  enough. 
It  is  the  tradition  of  the  elders,  the  Biblical,  Greek, 
Roman,  savage  hierarchies  which,  in  their  time, 
were  sound  because,  lacking  education  of  any 
kind,  communities  could  resort  only  to  the  ex- 
perience of  the  aged.  But  a  thing  that  is  natural 
169 


THE   BREAK-UP   OF  THE   FAMILY 

is  not  always  convenient,  and,  after  all,  the  chief 
mission  of  the  civilizer  is  to  bottle  up  Nature 
until  she  is  wanted.  This  tyranny  breeds  in  youth 
a  quite  horrible  hatred,  while  it  hardens  the  old, 
makes  them  incapable  of  seeing  the  point  of  view 
of  youth  because  it  is  too  long  since  they  held  it. 
They  insist  upon  the  society  of  the  young;  they 
take  them  out  to  call  on  old  people;  they  drive 
them  round  and  round  the  park  in  broughams, 
and  then  round  again;  they  deprive  them  of 
entertainments  because  they  themselves  cannot 
bear  noise  and  late  hours,  or  because  they  have 
come  to  fear  expense,  or  because  they  feel  weak 
and  are  ill.  It  is  tragic  to  think  that  so  few  of 
us  can  hope  to  die  gracefully. 

The  trouble  does  not  lie  entirely  with  the  old; 
indeed,  I  think  it  lies  more  with  the  young,  who, 
crossed  and  irritated,  are  given  to  badgering  the 
old  people  because  they  are  slow,  because  they 
do  not  understand  the  problems  of  Lord  Kitchener 
and  are  still  thinking  of  the  problems  of  Mr. 
Gladstone.  They  are  harsh  because  the  old  are 
forgetful,  because  their  faded  memories  are  sweet, 
because  they  will  always  prefer  the  late  Sir  Henry 
Irving  to  Mr.  Charles  Hawtrey.  The  young  are 
cruel  when  the  old  people  refuse  to  send  a  letter 

170 


THE   BREAK-UP  OF  THE  FAMILY 

without  sealing  it,  or  when  they  insist  upon  buy- 
ing their  hats  from  the  milliner  who  made  them 
in  1890  and  makes  them  still  in  the  same  fashion. 
They  are  even  harsh  to  them  when  they  are  deaf 
or  short-sighted  and  fumbling;  they  come  to 
think  that  a  wise  child  should  learn  from  his  sire's 
errors. 

It  is  a  pity,  but  thus  it  is ;  so  what  is  the  use  of 
thinking  that  the  modern  family  must  endure? 
It  is  no  use  to  say  that  the  old  are  right  or  that 
the  young  are  right;  they  disagree.  It  is  no- 
body's fault,  and  it  is  everybody's  misfortune. 
They  disagree  largely  because  there  is  too  much 
propinquity.  It  is  propinquity  that  brings  one 
to  think  there  is  something  rather  repulsive  in 
blood  relations.  It  is  propinquity  that  brings  one 
to  love  and  then  later  to  dislike.  Mr.  George 
Moore  has  put  the  case  ideally  in  his  Memoirs 
of  My  Dead  Life,  where  Doris,  the  girl  who  has 
escaped  from  her  family  with  the  hero  says : 
"This  is  the  first  time  I  have  ever  lived  alone, 
that  I  have  ever  been  free  from  questions.  It 
was  a  pleasure  to  remember  suddenly,  as  I  was 
dressing,  that  no  one  would  ask  me  where  I  was 
going ;  that  I  was  just  like  a  bird  myself,  free  to 
spring  off  the  branch  and  to  fly.  At  home  there 
171 


THE  BREAK-UP  OF  THE  FAMILY 

are  always  people  round  one ;  somebody  is  in  the 
dining  room,  somebody  is  in  the  drawing-room ; 
and  if  one  goes  down  the  passage  with  one's  hat 
on,  there  is  always  somebody  to  ask  where  one  is 
going,  and  if  you  say  you  don't  know,  they  say: 
'Are  you  going  to  the  right  or  to  the  left?  Be- 
cause, if  you  are  going  to  the  left,  I  should  like 
you  to  stop  at  the  apothecary's  and  to  ask    .  .  . '" 

Yes,  that  is  what  happens.  That  is  the  tragedy 
of  the  family;  it  lives  on  top  of  itself.  The 
daughters  go  too  much  with  their  mothers  to 
shop ;  there  are  too  many  joint  holidays,  too 
many  compulsory  rejoicings  at  Christmas  or  on 
birthdays.  There  are  not  enough  private  places 
in  the  house.  I  have  heard  one  young  suffragist, 
sentenced  to  fourteen  days  for  breaking  windows, 
say  that,  quite  apart  from  having  struck  a  blow 
for  the  Cause,  it  was  the  first  peaceful  fortnight 
she  had  ever  known.  This  should  not  be  con- 
founded with  the  misunderstood  offer  of  a  well- 
known  leader  of  the  suffrage  cause  who  offered  a 
pound  to  the  funds  of  the  movement  for  every  day 
that  his  wife  was  kept  in  jail. 

In  a  family,  friendships  are  difficult,  for  Maude 
does  not  always  like  Arabella's  dearest  friend ;  or, 
which  is  worse,  Maude  will  stand  Arabella's  dearest 

172 


THE   BREAK-UP   OF   THE   FAMILY 

friend,  whom  she  detests,  so  that  next  day  she  may 
have  the  privilege  of  forcing  upon  Arabella  her 
own,  whom  Arabella  cannot  bear.  That  sort  of 
thing  is  called  tolerance  and  self-sacrifice;  in 
reality  it  is  mutual  tyranny,  and  amounts  to  the 
passing  on  of  pinches,  as  it  were,  from  boy  to 
boy  on  the  benches  of  schools.  In  a  developing 
generation  this  cannot  endure ;  youthful  egotism 
will  not  forever  tolerate  youthful  arrogance.  As 
for  the  old,  they  cannot  indefinitely  remain  with 
the  young,  for,  after  all,  there  are  only  two  things 
to  talk  of  with  any  intensity  —  the  future  and  the 
past ;  they  are  the  topics  of  different  generations. 

Still,  for  various  reasons,  this  condition  is  en- 
dured. It  is  cheaper  to  live  together ;  it  is  more 
convenient  socially;  it  is  customary,  which,  es- 
pecially in  England,  is  most  important.  But  it 
demands  an  impossible  and  unwilling  tolerance, 
sometimes  fraudulent  exhibitions  of  love,  some- 
times sham  charity.  It  is  not  pleasant  to  hear 
Arabella,  returning  from  a  walk  with  her  father, 
say  to  Maude:  " Thank  Heaven,  that's  over! 
Your  turn  to-morrow."  Perhaps  it  would  not 
be  so  if  the  father  did  not  by  threat  or  by  prayer 
practically  compel  his  daughters  to  "take  duty." 
There  are  alleviations  —  games,  small  social  pleas- 
173 


THE   BREAK-UP  OF  THE   FAMILY 

ures,  dances  —  but  there  is  no  freedom.  A  little 
for  the  sons,  perhaps,  but  even  they  are  limited  in 
their  comings  and  goings  if  they  live  in  their  father's 
house.  As  for  the  girls,  they  are  driven  to  find  the 
illusion  of  freedom  in  wage  labor,  unless  they 
marry  and  develop,  as  they  grow  older,  the  same 
problem. 


Fortunately,  and  this  may  save  something  of  the 
family  spirit,  times  are  changing.  It  must  not  be 
imagined  from  the  foregoing  that  I  am  a  resolute 
enemy  of  any  grouping  between  men  and  women, 
that  I  view  with  hatred  the  family  in  a  box  at  the 
theater  or  round  the  Sunday  joint.  I  am  not 
attracted  by  the  idea  of  family;  a  large  family 
collected  together  makes  me  think  a  little  of  a 
rabbit  hutch.  But  I  recognize  that  couples  will 
to  the  end  want  to  live  together,  that  they  will 
be  fond  of  their  children,  and  that  their  children 
will  be  fond  of  them;  also  that  it  is  not  socially 
convenient  for  husband  and  wife  to  live  in  separate 
blocks  of  flats  and  to  hand  over  their  children  to 
the  county  council.  There  are  a  great  many 
children  to-day  who  would  be  happier  in  the  work- 
house than  in  their  homes,  but  there  exists  in  the 

i74 


THE   BREAK-UP   OF  THE   FAMILY 

human  mind  a  prejudice  against  the  workhouse, 
and  social  psychology  must  take  it  into  account. 
All  I  ask  is  that  members  of  a  family  should  not 
scourge  one  another  with  whips  and  occasionally 
with  scorpions,  and  I  conceive  that  nothing  could 
be  more  delightful  than  a  group  of  people,  not 
too  far  removed  from  one  another  by  age,  banded 
together  for  mutual  recreation  and  support.  So 
anything  that  tends  to  liberalize  the  family,  to 
exorcise  the  ghost  of  the  old  patriarch,  is  agreeable. 

Patriarch !  What  a  word  —  the  father  as  mas- 
ter! He  will  not  be  master  very  long,  and  I  do 
not  think  that  he  will  want  to  remain  master,  for 
his  attitude  is  changing,  not  as  swiftly  as  that  of 
his  children,  but  still  changing.  He  is  not  so  sure 
of  himself  now  when  he  doubts  the  advisability  of 
pulling  down  the  shed  at  the  back  of  the  garden, 
and  his  youngest  daughter  quotes  from  Nietzsche 
that  to  build  a  sanctuary  you  must  first  destroy  a 
sanctuary.  And,  though  he  is  rather  uncomfort- 
able, he  does  not  say  much  when  in  the  evening 
his  wife  appears  dressed  in  a  Russian  ballet  frock 
or  even  a  little  less.  He  is  growing  used  to  educa- 
tion, and  he  fears  it  less  than  he  did.  In  fact,  he 
is  beginning  to  appreciate  it. 

His  wife  is  more  suspicious,  for  she  belongs  to  a 
175 


THE  BREAK-UP  OF  THE  FAMILY 

generation  of  women  that  was  ignorant  and  reveled 
in  its  ignorance  and  called  it  charm,  a  generation 
when  all  women  were  fools  except  the  spitfires 
and  the  wits.  She  tends  to  think  that  she  was 
" finished"  as  a  lady;  her  daughters  consider 
that  she  was  done  for.  The  grandmother  is  a 
little  jealous,  but  the  mother  of  to-day,  the  formed 
woman  of  about  thirty-five,  has  made  a  great  leap 
and  resembles  her  children  much  more  than  she 
does  her  mother.  Her  offspring  do  not  say: 
"What  is  home  without  a  mother?  Peace,  per- 
fect peace."  She  is  a  little  too  conscientious, 
perhaps;  she  has  turned  her  back  rather  rudely 
upon  her  mother's  pursuits,  such  as  tea  and  scandal, 
and  has  taken  too  virulently  to  lectures  or  evolu- 
tion and  proteid.  She  is  too  vivid,  like  a  newly 
painted  railing,  but,  like  the  railing,  she  will  tone 
down.  She  pretends  to  be  very  socialistic  or 
very  fast ;  on  the  whole  she  affects  rather  the  fast 
style.  We  must  not  complain.  Is  not  brown 
paint  in  the  dining  room  worse  than  pink  paint 
on  the  face? 

Whatever  may  be  said  about  revolting  daughters, 

I  suspect  that  the  change  in  the  parent  has  been 

greater  than  that  in  the  child,  because  the  child  in 

1830  did  not  differ  so  much  from  the  child  of  to- 

176 


THE  BREAK-UP   OF  THE   FAMILY 

day  as  might  appear.  Youth  then  was  restless  and 
insurgent,  just  as  it  is  to-day;  only  it  was  more 
effectively  kept  down.  If  to-day  it  is  less  kept 
down,  this  is  partly  for  reasons  I  will  indicate, 
but  largely  because  the  adult  has  changed.  The 
patriarch  is  nearly  dead;  he  is  no  longer  the 
polygamous  brute  who  ruled  his  wives  with  rods, 
murdered  his  infant  sons,  and  sold  his  infant 
daughters ;  his  successor,  the  knight  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  who  locked  up  his  wife  in  a  tower  for  seven 
years  while  he  crusaded  in  the  Holy  Land  —  he, 
too,  has  gone.  And  the  merchant  in  broadcloth 
of  Victorian  days,  who  slept  vigorously  in  the 
dining  room  on  Sunday  afternoon,  has  been  re- 
placed by  a  man  who  says  he  is  sorry  if  told  he 
snores.  He  is  more  liberal ;  he  believes  in  reason 
now  rather  than  in  force,  and  generally  would  not 
contradict  Milton's  lines  — 

"Who  overcomes  by  force 
Hath  overcome  but  half  his  foe." 

He  has  come  to  desire  love  rather  than  power, 
and,  little  by  little  —  thanks  mainly  to  the  "yel- 
low" press  —  has  acquired  a  chastened  liking  for 
new  ideas.  The  spread  of  pleasure  all  round  him, 
the  vaudeville,  the  theaters,  moving-picture  shows, 
177 


THE   BREAK-UP   OF   THE   FAMILY 

excursions  to  the  seaside  —  all  these  have  taught 
him  that  gaiety  may  not  clash  with  respectability. 
Especially,  he  is  more  ready  to  argue,  for  a  peace- 
ful century  has  taught  him  that  a  word  is  better 
than  a  blow.  There  may  be  a  change  in  his 
psychology  after  this  war,  for  he  is  being  educated 
by  the  million  in  the  point  of  view  that  a  loaded 
rifle  is  worth  half  a  dozen  scraps  of  paper;  it  is 
quite  possible  that  he  will  carry  this  view  into  his 
social  life.  There  may,  therefore,  be  a  reaction  for 
thirty  years  or  so,  but  thirty  years  is  a  trifle  in 
questions  such  as  these. 

Naturally,  women  have  in  this  direction  de- 
veloped further  than  men,  for  they  had  more 
leeway  to  make  up.  Man  has  so  long  "been  the 
educated  animal  that  he  did  not  need  so  much 
liberalizing.  I  do  not  refer  to  the  Middle  Ages, 
when  learning  was  entirely  preempted  by  the 
male  (with  the  exception  of  poetry  and  music), 
for  in  those  days  there  was  no  education  save 
among  the  priests.  I  mean  rather  that  the  great 
development  of  elementary  learning,  which  took 
place  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
affected  men  for  about  a  generation  before  it 
affected  women.  In  England,  at  least,  university 
education  for  women  is  very  recent,  for  Girton 

I78 


THE  BREAK-UP  OF  THE  FAMILY 

was  opened  only  in  1873,  Newnham,  at  Cam- 
bridge, in  1875 ;  Miss  Beale  made  Cheltenham 
College  a  power  only  a  little  later,  and  indeed  it 
may  be  said  that  formal  education  developed  only 
about  1890.  Both  in  England  and  in  the  United 
States  women  have  not  had  much  more  than  a 
generation  to  make  up  the  leeway  of  sixty  cen- 
turies. It  has  benefited  them  as  mothers  because 
they  did  not  start  with  the  prejudices  left  in  the 
male  mind  by  the  slow  evolution  from  one  form 
of  learning  to  another;  women  did  not  have  to 
live  down  Plato,  Descartes,  or  Adam  Smith; 
they  began  on  Haeckel  and  H.  G.  Wells.  The 
mothers  of  to-day  have  been  flung  neck  and  crop 
into  Paradise;  they  came  in  for  the  new  times, 
which  are  always  better  than  the  old  times  and 
inferior  only  to  to-morrow.  They  were  made  to 
understand  a  possible  democracy  in  the  nursery 
because  all  round  them,  even  in  Russia,  even  in 
Turkey,  democracy  was  growing,  some  say  as  a 
rose,  some  say  as  a  weed,  but  anyhow  irrepressibly. 
Who  could  be  a  queen  by  the  cradle  when  more 
august  thrones  were  tottering?  So  woman  quite 
suddenly  became  more  than  a  pretty  foil  to  the 
educated  man,  she  became  something  like  his 
superior  and  his  elder ;  little  by  little  she  has  begun 
179 


THE   BREAK-UP  OF  THE   FAMILY 

to  teach  him  who  once  was  her  master  and  still 
in  fond  delusion  believes  he  is. 

It  cannot  be  said  that  the  mother  has  until 
very  recently  liked  education.  She  has  suffered 
from  the  prejudice  that  afflicted  her  own  mother, 
who  thought  that  because  she  had  worked  samplers 
all  girls  must  work  samplers;  the  "old"  woman's 
daughter,  because  she  went  to  Cheltenham,  tends 
to  think  that  her  little  girl  ought  to  go  to  Chelten- 
ham. It  is  human  rather  than  feminine,  for 
generations  follow  one  another  at  Eton  and  at 
Harvard.  But  more  than  feminine,  I  think  it  is 
masculine  because,  until  very  recently,  woman 
has  disliked  education,  while  man  has  treated  it 
with  respect ;  he  has  not  loved  it  for  its  own  sake, 
but  because  he  thought  that  nam  et  ipsa  scientia 
potestas  est.  Not  a  very  high  motive,  but  still  the 
future  will  preoccupy  itself  very  little  with  the 
reasons  for  which  we  did  things;  it  will  be  glad 
enough  if  we  do  them.  Perhaps  we  may  yet  turn 
the  edges  of  swords  on  the  blasts  of  rhetoric. 

An  immediate  consequence  of  the  growth  of 
education  has  been  a  change  in  the  status  of  the 
child.  It  is  no  longer  property,  for  how  can  one 
prevent  a  child  from  pulling  down  the  window  sash 
at  night  when  it  knows  something  of  ventilation? 
1 80 


THE   BREAK-UP   OF   THE   FAMILY 

Or  give  it  an  iron  tonic  when  it  realizes  that  full- 
blooded  people  cannot  take  iron?  The  child  has 
changed ;  it  is  no  longer  the  creature  that,  point- 
ing to  an  animal  in  the  field,  said,  "What's  that?" 
and  the  reply  being,  "A  cow",  asked  "Why?" 
The  child  is  perilously  close  to  asking  whether  the 
animal  is  carnivorous  or  herbivorous.  That  makes 
coercion  very  difficult.  But  I  do  not  think  that 
the  modern  parent  desires  to  coerce  as  much  as 
did  his  forbear.  Rather  he  desires  to  develop  the 
child's  personality,  and  in  its  early  years  this 
leads  to  horrid  results,  to  children  being  "taught 
to  see  the  beautiful"  or  "being  made  to  realize 
the  duties  of  a  citizen."  We  are  in  for  a  genera- 
tion made  up  half  of  bulbous-headed,  bespectacled 
precocities,  and  half  of  barbarians  who  are  "realiz- 
ing their  personality"  by  the  continual  use  of 
"shall"  and  "shan't."  This  will  pass  as  all 
things  pass,  the  old  child  and  the  rude  child,  just 
like  the  weak  parent  after  the  brute  parent,  and 
it  is  enough  that  the  new  generation  points  to 
another  generation,  for  there  seldom  was  a  time 
that  was  not  better  than  its  father  and  the  herald 
of  a  finer  son. 

Generally   the   parent   will   help,    for   his   new 
attitude  can  be  expressed  in  a  phrase.     He  does 
181 


THE  BREAK-UP  OF  THE  FAMILY 

not  say,  "I  am  master",  but,  "I  am  responsible." 
He  has  begun  to  realize  that  the  child  is  not  a 
regrettable  accident  or  a  little  present  from  Provi- 
dence ;  he  is  beginning  to  look  upon  the  care  of  the 
child  as  a  duty.  He  has  extended  the  ideal  of 
citizenship,  born  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  which  was  "to  leave  the  world  a  little 
better  than  he  found  it";  he  has  passed  on  to 
wanting  his  son  to  be  a  little  richer  than  he  was, 
and  a  little  more  learned;  he  is  coming  to  want 
his  son  to  be  a  finer  and  bolder  man ;  he  will  come 
in  time  to  want  his  daughter  to  be  a  finer  and 
bolder  woman,  which  just  now  he  bears  pretty 
well.  His  wife  is  helping  him  a  great  deal  because 
she  is  escaping  from  her  home  ties  to  the  open 
trades  and  professions,  to  the  entertainments  of 
psychic,  political,  and  artistic  lectures  which  make 
of  her  head  a  waste  paper  basket  of  intellect,  but 
still  create  in  that  head  a  disturbance  far  better 
than  the  ancient  and  cow-like  placidity.  The 
modern  mother  is  often  too  much  inclined  to 
weigh  the  baby  four  times  a  day,  to  feed  it  on 
ozoneid,  or  something  equally  funny,  to  expose  as 
much  of  its  person  as  possible,  to  make  it  gaze  at 
Botticelli  prints  when  in  its  bath.  She  will  no 
doubt  want  it  to  mate  eugenically,  in  which  she 

182 


THE  BREAK-UP  OF  THE  FAMILY 

will  probably  be  disappointed,  for  love  laughs  at 
Galtons;  but  still,  in  her  struggle  against  disease 
and  wooden  thinking,  she  will  have  helped  the 
child  by  giving  it  something  to  discard  better  than 
the  old  respects  and  fears.  The  modern  mother 
has  begun  to  consider  herself  as  a  human  being 
as  well  as  a  mother ;  she  no  longer  thinks  that 

"A  mother  is  a  mother  still, 
The  holiest  thing  alive." 

She  is  coming  to  look  upon  herself  as  a  sort  of 
aesthetic  school  inspector.  She  lives  round  her 
children  rather  than  in  them;  she  is  less  animal. 
Above  all,  she  is  more  critical.  Having  more  op- 
portunity of  mixing  with  people,  she  ceases  to  see 
her  child  as  marvelous  because  it  is  her  child. 
She  is  losing  something  of  her  conceit  and  has 
learned  to  say,  "the  baby"  instead  of  "my  baby." 
It  is  a  revolutionary  atmosphere,  and  the  develop- 
ing child  has  something  to  push  against  when  it 
wants  to  earn  its  parents'  approval,  for  modern 
parents  are  fair  judges  of  excellence;  they  are 
educated.  The  old-time  father  was  nonplussed  by 
his  son,  and  could  not  help  him  in  his  delectus, 
but  the  modern  father  is  not  so  puzzled  when  his 
son  wishes  to  converse  of  railway  finance.    The 

183 


THE   BREAK-UP   OF   THE   FAMILY 

parent,  more  capable  of  comradeship,  has  come 
to  want  to  be  a  comrade.  He  is  no  longer  ad- 
dressed as  " sir";  he  is  often  addressed  as  "old 
chap."  That  is  fine,  but  it  is  in  dead  opposition 
to  the  close,  hard  family  idea. 

Likewise,  man  and  wife  have  come  to  look  upon 
each  other  rather  differently;  not  differently 
enough,  but  then  humanity  never  does  anything 
enough;  when  it  comes  near  to  anything  drastic 
it  grows  afraid.  Man  still  thinks  that  "  whoso 
findeth  a  wife  findeth  a  good  thing",  but  he  is 
no  longer  finding  the  one  he  sought  not  so  long 
ago.  She  is  no  longer  his  property,  and  it  would 
not  occur  to  the  roughest  among  us  to  offer  a  wife 
for  sale  for  five  shillings  in  Smithfield  market,  as 
was  done  now  and  then  as  late  as  the  early  nine- 
teenth century.  Woman  is  no  longer  property; 
she  has  been  freed ;  in  England  she  has  even  been 
allowed,  by  the  Married  Women's  Property  Act, 
to  hold  that  which  was  her  own.  The  Married 
Women's  Property  Act  has  modified  the  attitude 
of  the  mother  to  her  child  and  to  her  husband. 
She  is  less  linked  when  she  has  property,  for  she 
can  go.  If  every  woman  had  means,  or  a  trade 
of  her  own,  we  should  have  achieved  something 
like  free  alliance ;  woman  would  be  in  the  position 
184 


THE  BREAK-UP   OF  THE   FAMILY 

of  the  woman  in  " Pygmalion",  whom  her  man 
could  not  beat  because,  she  not  being  married  to 
him,  if  he  beat  her  she  might  leave  him  —  in  its 
way  a  very  strong  argument  against  marriage. 

But  most  women  have  no  property,  and  yet, 
somehow,  by  the  slow  loosening  of  family  links, 
they  have  gained  some  independence.  I  am  not 
talking  of  America,  where  men  have  deposited 
their  liberty  and  their  fortunes  into  the  prettiest, 
the  greediest,  the  most  ruthless  hands  in  the  world ; 
but  rather  of  England,  where  for  a  long  time  a 
man  set  up  in  life  with  a  dog  as  a  friend,  a  wife  to 
exercise  it,  and  a  cat  to  catch  the  mice.  Until 
recently  the  householder  kept  a  tight  hand  upon 
domestic  expenditure;  he  paid  all  the  bills,  in- 
spected the  weekly  accounts  with  a  fierce  air  and 
an  internal  hope  that  he  understood  them ;  rent, 
taxes,  heat,  light,  furniture,  repairs,  servants' 
wages,  school  fees  —  he  saw  to  it  that  every  penny 
was  accounted  for  and  then,  when  pleased,  gave 
his  wife  a  tip  to  go  and  buy  herself  a  ribbon  with. 
(There  are  still  a  great  many  men  who  cannot 
think  of  anything  a  woman  may  want  except  a 
ribbon;  in  i860  it  was  a  shawl.)  When  a  woman 
had  property,  even  for  some  time  after  the  Act, 
she  was  not  considered  fit  to  administer  it.     She 

185 


THE  BREAK-UP  OF  THE  FAMILY 

was  not  fit,  but  she  should  have  been  allowed  to 
administer  it  so  as  to  learn  from  experience  how 
not  to  be  swindled.  Anyhow,  the  money  was 
taken  from  her,  and  I  know  of  three  cases  in  a 
single  large  family  where  the  wife  meekly  indorses 
her  dividend  warrant  so  that  the  husband  may 
pay  it  into  his  banking  account.  That  spirit 
survives,  but  every  day  it  decays;  man,  finding 
his  wife  competent,  tends  to  make  her  an  allow- 
ance, to  let  her  have  her  own  banking  account, 
and  never  to  ask  for  the  pass  book.  He  has 
thrown  upon  her  the  responsibility  for  all  the 
household  and  its  finance;  by  realizing  that  she 
was  capable  he  has  made  her  capable.  Though 
she  be  educated,  he  loves  her  not  less ;  perhaps  he 
loves  her  more.  It  is  no  longer  true  to  say  with 
Lord  Lyttleton  that  "the  lover  in  the  husband 
may  be  lost."  Formerly  the  lover  was  generally 
lost,  for  after  she  had  had  six  children  before  she 
was  thirty  the  mother  used  to  put  on  a  cap  and 
retire.  Now  she  does  not  retire ;  indeed,  she  hides 
his  bedroom  slippers  and  puts  out  his  pumps,  for 
life  is  more  vivid  and  exterior  now;  this  is  the 
cinema  age. 

Finding   her   responsible,   amusing,   capable   of 
looking  after  herself,   man  is  developing  a  still 

186 


THE   BREAK-UP   OF  THE   FAMILY 

stranger  liberalism;  he  has  recognized  that  he 
may  not  be  enough  to  fill  a  woman's  life,  that  she 
may  care  for  pleasures  other  than  his  society,  and 
indeed  for  that  of  other  men.  He  has  not  aban- 
doned his  physical  jealousy  and  will  not  so  long 
as  he  is  a  man,  but  he  is  slowly  beginning  to  view 
without  dismay  his  wife's  companionship  with 
other  men.  She  may  be  seen  with  them;  she 
may  lunch  with  them;  she  may  not,  as  a  rule, 
dine  with  them,  but  that  is  an  evolution  to  come. 
This  springs  from  the  deep  realization  that  there 
are  between  men  and  women  relations  other  than 
the  passionate.  It  is  still  true  that  between  every 
man  and  every  woman  there  is  a  flicker  of  love, 
just  a  shadow,  perhaps;  but  not  so  long  ago  be- 
tween men  and  women  there  was  only  "yes"  or 
"no,"  and  to-day  there  are  also  common  tastes 
and  common  interests.  This  is  fine,  this  is  neces- 
sary, but  it  is  not  good  for  the  old  British  house- 
hold where  husband  and  wife  must  cleave  unto 
each  other  alone ;  where,  as  in  the  story  books,  they 
lived  happy  ever  after.  As  with  the  home,  so 
with  the  family;  neither  can  survive  when  it 
suffers  comparison,  for  it  derives  all  its  strength 
from  its  exclusivism.  As  soon  as  a  woman  begins 
to  realize  that  there  is    charm  in  the  society  of 

i87 


THE  BREAK-UP  OF  THE  FAMILY 

men  other  than  her  uncles,  her  brothers,  and  her 
cousins,  the  solid,  four-square  attitude  of  the 
family  is  menaced.  Welcome  the  stranger,  and 
legal  hymen  is  abashed. 

All  this  springs  from  woman's  new  estate  —  that 
of  human  being.  She  must  be  considered  almost 
as  much  as  a  man.  Where  there  is  wealth  her 
tastes  must  be  consulted,  and  more  than  one  man 
has  been  sentenced  by  a  tyrannous  wife  to  wear 
blue  coats  and  blue  ties  all  his  life.  She  is  coming 
to  consider  that  the  husband  who  dresses  in  his 
wife's  bedroom  should  be  flogged,  while  the  one 
who  shaves  there  should  be  electrocuted.  And 
she  defends  her  view  with  entirely  one-sided  logic 
and  an  extended  vocabulary.  Here  again  is  a 
good,  a  necessary  thing;  but  where  is  the  old 
family  where  a  husband  could  in  safety,  when 
slightly  overcome,  retire  to  bed  with  his  boots  on? 
He  is  no  longer  king  of  the  castle,  but  a  menaced 
viceroy  in  an  insurgent  land. 

All  through  society  this  loosening  of  the  marriage 
bond  is  operative.  By  being  freer  within  matri- 
mony men  and  women  view  more  tolerantly 
breaches  of  the  matrimonial  code.  There  was  a 
time  when  a  male  co-respondent  was  not  received : 
that  is  over.     In  those  days  a  divorcee  was  not 


THE  BREAK-UP  OF  THE   FAMILY 

received  either,  even  when  the  divorce  was  pro- 
nounced in  her  favor.  Nowadays,  in  most  social 
circles,  the  decree  absolute  is  coming  to  be  looked 
upon  as  an  absolution.  I  do  not  refer  to  the 
United  States,  where  (I  judge  only  from  your 
novels)  divorce  outlaws  nobody,  but  to  steady  old 
England,  who  still  pretends  that  she  frowns  on 
the  rebels  and  finally  takes  them  back  with  a  sigh 
and  wonders  what  she  is  coming  to.  What  Eng- 
land is  coming  to  is  to  a  lesser  regard  for  the  mar- 
riage bond,  to  a  recognition  that  people  have  the 
right  to  rebel  against  their  yoke.  There  totters 
the  family  —  for  marriage  is  its  base,  and  the  more 
English  society  receives  in  its  ranks  those  who 
have  flouted  it,  the  more  it  will  be  shaken  by  the 
new  spirit  which  bids  human  creatures  live  to- 
gether, but  also  with  the  rest  of  the  world. 
Woman  was  kept  within  the  family  by  threats, 
by  banishment,  by  ostracism,  but  now  she  easily 
earns  forgiveness.  At  least  English  society  is 
deciding  to  forget  if  it  cannot  forgive  the  guilt 
—  a  truly  British  expedient.  At  the  root  is  a 
decaying  respect  for  the  marriage  bond,  a  growing 
respect  for  rebellion.  That  tendency  is  every- 
where, and  it  is  becoming  more  and  more  common 
for  husband  and  wife  to  take  separate  holidays; 
189 


THE   BREAK-UP   OF   THE   FAMILY 

there  are  even  some  who  leave  behind  them  merely 
a  slip:  "Gone  away,  address  unknown."  They 
are  cutting  the  wire  entanglements  behind  which 
lie  dangers  and  freedoms.  All  this  again  comes 
from  mutual  respect  with  mutual  realization,  from 
education,  and  especially  from  late  marriages. 
Late  marriages  are  one  of  the  most  potent  causes 
of  the  break-up  of  the  family,  for  now  women  are 
no  longer  caught  and  crushed  young;  they  are 
no  longer  burdened  matrons  at  thirty.  The  whole 
point  of  view  has  changed.  I  remember  reading 
in  an  early- Victorian  novel  this  phrase :  "She  was 
past  the  first  bloom  of  her  youth ;  she  was  twenty- 
three."  The  phrase  is  not  without  its  meaning; 
it  meant  that  the  male  was  seeking  not  a  wife,  but 
a  courtesan  who,  her  courtesanship  done,  could 
become  a  perfect  housekeeper.  Now  men  prefer 
women  of  twenty-seven  or  twenty-eight,  forsake 
the  backfisch  for  her  mother,  because  the  mother 
has  personality,  experience,  can  stimulate,  amuse, 
and  accompany.  Only  the  older  and  more  formed 
woman  is  no  longer  willing  to  enter  the  family  as 
a  jail ;  she  will  enter  it  only  as  a  hotel. 

Meanwhile,   from  child  to  parent  erosion  also 
operates.     I  do  not  think  that  the  modern  child 

190 


THE  BREAK-UP  OF  THE  FAMILY 

honors  its  father  and  its  mother  unless  it  thinks 
them  worthy  of  honor.  There  is  a  slump  in  re- 
spect, as  outside  the  family  there  is  a  slump  in 
reverence.  As  in  the  outer  world  a  man  began  by 
being  a  worthy,  then  a  member  of  Parliament, 
then  a  minister,  finally  was  granted  a  pension  and 
later  a  statue ;  and  as  now  a  man  is  first  a  journal- 
ist, then  a  member  of  Parliament,  a  minister,  and 
in  due  course  a  scoundrel,  so  inside  the  family 
does  a  father  become  an  equal  instead  of  a  tyrant, 
and  a  good  sort  instead  of  an  old  fogy.  For  re- 
spect, I  believe,  was  mainly  fear  and  greed.  The 
respect  of  the  child  for  its  father  was  very  like  the 
respect  that  Riquet,  the  little  dog,  felt  for  Monsieur 
Bergeret.     Anatole  France  has  expressed  it  ideally : 

"Oh,  my  master,  Bergeret,  God  of  Slaughter,  I 
worship  thee !  Hail,  oh  God  of  wrath !  Hail,  oh 
bountiful  God !  I  He  at  thy  feet,  I  lick  thy  hand. 
Thou  art  great  and  beautiful  when  at  the  laden 
board  thou  devourest  abundant  meats.  Thou  art 
great  and  beautiful  when,  from  a  thin  strip  of 
wood  causing  flame  to  spring,  thou  dost  of  night 
make  day.  .  .  ." 

That  was  a  little  the  child's  cosmogony.  Then 
the  child  became  educated,  capable  of  argument. 
In  contact  with  more  reasonable  parents  it  grew 
191 


THE  BREAK-UP  OF  THE   FAMILY 

more  reasonable.  The  parent,  confronted  with 
the  question,  "Why  must  I  do  what  you  order?" 
ceased  to  say,  "Because  I  say  so."  That  reply 
did  not  seem  good  enough  to  the  parent,  and  it 
ceased  to  be  good  enough  for  the  child.  If  the 
child  rebelled,  the  only  thing  to  do  was  to  strike 
it,  and  striking  is  no  longer  done ;  the  parent  pre- 
fers argument  because  the  child  is  capable  of 
understanding  argument.  The  child  is  more  law- 
ful, more  sensitive ;  it  is  unready  to  obey  blindly, 
and  it  is  no  longer  required  to  obey  blindly,  be- 
cause, while  the  parent  has  begun  to  doubt  his  own 
infallibility,  the  child  has  been  doing  so,  too.  The 
child  is  more  ready  and  more  able  to  criticize  its 
parents;  indeed,  the  whole  generation  is  critical, 
has  acquired  the  habit  of  introspection.  The 
child  is  a  little  like  the  supersoul  of  Mr.  Stephen 
Leacock,  and  is  developing  thoughts  like,  "Why 
am  I?  Why  am  I  what  I  am?  How?  and  why 
how?"  Obviously,  such  questions,  when  directed 
at  one's  father  and  mother,  are  a  little  shattering. 
It  is  true  that  once  upon  a  time  the  child  readily 
obeyed ;  now  and  then  it  criticized,  but  still  it 
obeyed,  for  it  had  been  told  that  its  duty  was  to 
execute,  as  was  its  parents'  to  command.  But 
duty  is  in  a  bad  way,  and  I,  for  one,  think  that 

192 


THE  BREAK-UP  OF  THE  FAMILY 

we  should  be  well  rid  of  duty,  for  it  appears  to  me 
to  be  merely  an  excuse  for  acting  without  consider- 
ing whether  the  deed  is  worthy.  The  man  who 
dies  for  his  country  because  he  loves  it  is  an  ideal- 
ist and  a  hero ;  the  man  who  does  that  because 
he  thinks  it  his  duty  is  a  fool.  The  conception 
of  duty  has  suffered;  from  the  child's  point  of 
view,  it  is  almost  extinct;  it  has  been  turned  up- 
side down,  and  there  is  a  growth  of  opinion  that 
the  parent  should  have  the  duties  and  the  child  the 
privileges.  It  is  the  theory  of  La  Course  du  Flam- 
beau, where  Hervieu  shows  us  each  generation 
using  and  bleeding  the  elder  generation.  Or  per- 
haps it  is  a  more  subtle  conception.  It  may  be 
that  the  eugenic  idea  is  vaguely  forming  in  the 
young  generation,  and  that,  in  an  unperceived 
return  to  nature,  they  are  deciding  to  eat  their 
grandfathers,  a  primitive  taste  which  I  have  never 
been  able  to  understand.  Youth,  feeling  that  the 
world  is  its  orange  to  suck,  is  inclined  to  consider 
that  the  elder  generation,  being  responsible  for  its 
presence,  should  look  after  it  and  serve  it.  That 
is  not  at  all  illogical ;  it  is  borne  out  by  Chinese 
law,  where,  if  you  save  a  man  from  suicide,  you 
must  feed  him  for  the  rest  of  his  life. 

Or  perhaps  it  is  a  broader  view,  a  more  socialized 
193 


THE  BREAK-UP   OF   THE   FAMILY 

one.  Very  young,  the  child  is  acquiring  a  vague 
sense  of  its  responsibility  to  the  race,  is  very  early 
becoming  a  citizen.  It  is  directed  that  way;  it 
hears  that  liberty  consists  in  doing  what  you  like, 
providing  you  injure  no  other  man.  Its  personal- 
ity being  encouraged  to  develop,  the  child  acquires 
a  higher  opinion  of  itself,  considers  that  it  owes 
something  to  itself,  that  it  has  rights.  Sacrifice 
is  still  inculcated  in  the  child,  but  not  so  much  be- 
cause it  is  a  moral  duty  as  because  it  is  mental 
discipline.  The  little  boy  is  not  told  to  give  the 
chocolates  to  his  little  sister  because  she  is  a  dear 
little  thing,  and  he  must  not  be  cruel  to  her  and 
make  her  cry ;  he  is  told  that  he  must  ,give  her 
the  chocolates  because  it  is  good  for  him  to  learn 
to  give  up  something.  That  impulse  is  the  im- 
pulse of  Polycrates,  who  threw  his  ring  into  the 
sea.  But,  then,  Polycrates  had  no  luck.  The 
child,  more  fortunate,  is  tending  to  realize  itself 
as  a  person,  and  so,  as  it  becomes  more  responsible, 
acquires  tolerance;  it  makes  allowances  for  its 
parents,  it  is  kind,  it  realizes  that  its  parents  have 
not  had  its  advantages.  All  that  is  very  swollen- 
headed  and  unpleasant,  but  still  I  prefer  it  to  the 
old  attitude,  to  the  time  when  voices  were  hushed 
and  footsteps  slowed  when  father's  latchkey  was 

194 


THE  BREAK-UP   OF  THE   FAMILY 

heard  in  the  lock.  To  the  child  the  parent  is  be- 
coming a  person  instead  of  the  God  of  Wrath ;  a 
person  with  rights,  but  not  a  person  to  whom 
everything  must  be  given  up.  Sacrifice  is  out  of 
date,  and  in  the  child  as  well  as  in  the  elders  there 
is  a  denial  of  the  dream  of  Ellen  Sturges  Cooper, 
for  few  wake  up  and  find  that  life  is  duty.  My 
life,  my  personality  —  all  that  has  sprung  from 
S timer,  from  Nietzsche,  from  the  great  modern 
reaction  against  socialism  and  uniformity;  it  is 
the  assertion  of  the  individual.  It  is  often  harsh ; 
the  daughter  who  used  to  take  her  father  for  a 
walk  now  sends  the  dog.  But  still  it  is  necessary ; 
old  hens  make  good  soup.  I  do  not  think  that  this 
has  killed  love,  for  love  can  coexist  with  mutual 
forbearance,  however  much  Doctor  Johnson  may 
have  doubted  it.  Doctor  Johnson  was  the  bad  old 
man  of  the  English  family,  and  I  do  not  suppose 
that  anybody  will  agree  that 

"If  the  man  who  turnips  cries 
Cry  not  when  his  father  dies, 
'Tis  a  proof  that  he  had  rather 
Have  a  turnip  than  his  father." 

A  possible  sentiment  in  an  older  generation,  but 
sentiments,  like  generations,    grow  out  of  date; 

i95 


THE  BREAK-UP  OF  THE   FAMILY 

they  are  swept  out  by  new  ideas  and  new  rejections 
—  rejection  of  religion,  rejection  of  morals.  We 
tend  toward  an  agnostic  world,  with  a  high  philo- 
sophical morality ;  we  have  attained  as  yet  neither 
agnosticism  nor  high  morality,  but  the  child  is 
shaking  off  the  ready-made  precepts  of  the  faiths 
and  the  Smilesian  theories.  It  is  unwillingly 
bound  by  the  ordinances  of  a  forgotten  alien  race ; 
as  a  puling  child,  carried  in  a  basket  by  an  eagle, 
like  the  tiny  builders  of  Ecbatana,  it  calls  for 
bricks  and  mortar  with  which  to  build  the  airy 
castle  of  the  future. 

3 

As  a  house  divided  against  itself,  the  family 
falls.  It  protests,  it  hugs  that  from  which  it 
suffered ;  it  protests  in  speech,  in  the  newspapers, 
that  still  it  is  united.  The  clan  is  dead,  and  blood 
is  not  as  thick  as  marmalade.  There  are  coun- 
tries where  the  link  is  strong,  as  in  France,  for 
instance.  I  quote  from  a  recent  and  realistic 
novel  the  words  of  a  mother  speaking  of  her  young 
married  daughter : 

"Every  Tuesday  we  dine  at  my  mother's,  and 
every  Thursday  at  my  mother-in-law's.  Of  course, 
now,  at  least  once  a  week  we  go  to  Madame  de 

196 


THE   BREAK-UP   OF  THE   FAMILY 

Castelac ;  later  on  I  shall  expect  Pauline  and  her 
husband  every  Wednesday." 

"That  is  a  pity,"  said  Sorel.  "That  leaves 
three  days." 

"Oh,  there  are  other  calls.  Every  week  my 
mother  comes  to  us  the  same  evening  as  does  my 
father-in-law,  but  that  is  quite  informal." 

Family  dinners  are  rare  in  England.  They 
flourish  only  at  weddings  and  at  funerals,  espe- 
cially at  funerals,  for  mankind  collected  enjoys  woe. 
But  other  occasions  —  birthdays,  Christmas  —  are 
shunned  ;  Christmas  especially,  in  spite  of  Dickens 
and  Mr.  Chesterton,  is  not  what  it  was,  for  its 
quondam  victims,  having  fewer  children,  and 
being  less  bound  to  their  aunts'  apron  strings,  go 
away  to  the  seaside,  or  stay  at  home  and  hide. 
That  is  a  general  change,  and  many  modern  factors, 
such  as  travel,  intercourse  with  strangers,  emigra- 
tion, have  shown  the  family  that  there  are  other 
places  than  home,  until  some  of  them  have  begun 
to  think  that  "East  or  West,  home's  worst." 
There  is  a  frigidity  among  the  relations  in  the 
home,  a  disinclination  to  call  one's  mother-in-law 
"Mother."  Indeed,  relations-in-law  are  no  longer 
relatives;  the  two  families  do  not  immediately 
after  the  wedding  call  one  another  Kitty  or  Tom. 
197 


THE  BREAK-UP  OF  THE   FAMILY 

The  acquired  family  is  merely  a  sub-family,  and 
often  the  grouping  resembles  that  of  the  Mon- 
tagues and  the  Capulets,  if  Romeo  and  Juliet  had 
married.  Mrs.  Herbert  said,  charmingly,  in  Gar- 
den Oats,  "Our  in-laws  are  our  strained  relations." 
With  the  closeness  of  the  family  goes  the  regard 
for  the  name,  once  so  strong.  I  feel  sure  that  in 
all  seriousness,  round  about  1850,  a  father  may  have 
said  to  his  son  that  he  was  disgracing  the  name  of 
Smith.  Now  he  may  almost  disgrace  the  name 
of  FitzArundel  for  all  anybody  cares.  There  was 
a  time  when  it  was  thought  criminal  that  a  man 
should  become  a  bankrupt,  but  few  families  will 
now  mortgage  their  estate  to  prevent  a  distant 
member's  appearance  before  the  official  receiver. 
The  name  of  the  family  is  now  merely  generic, 
and  the  bold  young  girl  of  to-morrow  will  say, 
"My  father  began  life  as  a  forger  and  was  ulti- 
mately hanged,  but  that  shouldn't  bother  you, 
should  it?"  Much  of  that  deliquescence  is  due  to 
the  factory  system,  for  it  opened  opportunities  to 
all,  which  many  took,  raised  men  high  in  the  scale 
of  wealth;  one  brother  might  be  a  millionaire  in 
Manchester,  while  another  tended  a  bar  in  Liver- 
pool. Sometimes  the  rich  member  of  the  family 
came  back,  such  as  the  uncle  who  returned  from 

198 


THE  BREAK-UP   OF   THE   FAMILY 

America  with  a  fortune,  in  a  state  of  sentimental 
generosity,  but  most  of  the  time  it  has  meant  that 
the  family  split  into  those  who  keep  their  carriage 
and  those  who  take  the  tram.  Perhaps  Cervantes 
did  not  exaggerate  when  saying  that  there  are 
only  two  families :   Have-Much  and  Have-Little. 

4 
What  the  future  reserves  I  disincline  to  prophesy. 
It  is  enough  to  point  to  tendencies,  and  to  say, 
" Along  this  road  we  go,  we  know  not  whither." 
But  of  one  thing  I  feel  certain  :  the  family  will  not 
become  closer,  for  the  individualistic  tendency  of 
man  leads  to  instinctive  rebellion;  his  latent 
anarchism  to  isolate  him  from  his  fellows.  There 
is  a  growing  rebellion  among  women  against  the 
thrall  of  motherhood,  which,  however  delightful 
it  may  be,  is  a  thrall  —  the  velvet-coated  yoke  is  a 
yoke  still.  I  do  not  suppose  that  the  mothers  of 
the  future  will  unanimously  deposit  their  babies 
in  the  municipal  creche.  But  I  do  believe  that 
with  the  growth  of  cooperative  households,  and 
especially  of  that  quite  new  class,  the  skilled 
Princess  Christian  or  Norland  nurses,  there  will 
be  a  delegation  of  responsibility  from  the  mother 
to  the  expert.  It  will  go  down  to  the  poor  as  well 
199 


THE  BREAK-UP  OF  THE  FAMILY 

as  to  the  rich.  Already  we  have  district  nurses 
for  the  poor,  and  I  do  not  see  why,  as  we  realize 
more  and  more  the  value  of  young  life,  there  should 
not  be  district  kindergartens.  They  would  re- 
move the  child  still  more  from  its  home;  they 
would  throw  it  in  contact  with  creatures  of  its 
own  age  in  its  very  earliest  years,  prepare  it  for 
school,  place  it  in  an  atmosphere  where  it  must 
stand  by  itself  among  others  who  will  praise  or 
blame  without  special  consideration,  for  they  are 
strangers  to  it  and  do  not  bear  its  name. 

I  suspect,  too,  that  marriage  will  be  freer;  it 
will  not  be  made  more  easy  or  more  difficult,  but 
greater  facilities  will  be  given  for  divorce  so  that 
human  beings  may  no  longer  be  bound  together  in 
dislike,  because  they  once  committed  the  crime  of 
loving  unwisely.  This,  too,  must  loosen  the  family 
link,  to-day  still  strong  because  people  know  that 
it  is  so  hard  to  break  it.  It  will  be  a  conditional 
link  when  it  can  easily  be  done  away  with,  a  link 
that  will  be  maintained  only  on  terms  of  good  be- 
havior on  both  sides.  The  marriage  service  will 
need  a  new  clause;  we  shall  have  to  swear  to  be 
agreeable.  The  relation  between  husband  and 
wife  must  change  more.  Conjugal  tyranny  still 
exists  in  a  country  such  as  England  where  the  wife 

200 


THE  BREAK-UP   OF  THE   FAMILY 

is  not  co-guardian  of  the  child,  for  during  his 
wife's  lifetime  a  husband  may  remove  her  child 
into  another  country,  refuse  her  access  save  at  the 
price  of  a  costly  and  uncertain  legal  action.  The 
child  itself  must  have  rights.  At  present,  all  the 
rights  it  has  are  to  such  food  as  its  parents  will 
give  it;  it  needs  very  gross  cruelty  before  a  man 
can  be  convicted  of  starving  or  neglecting  his 
child.  And  when  that  child  is  what  they  call 
grown  up  —  that  is  to  say,  sixteen  —  in  practice 
it  loses  all  its  rights,  must  come  out  and  fend  for 
itself.  I  suspect  that  that  will  not  last  indefinitely, 
and  that  the  new  race  will  have  upon  the  old  race 
the  claim  that  owing  to  the  old  race  it  was  born. 
A  socialized  life  is  coming  where  there  will  be  less 
freedom  for  those  who  are  unfit  to  be  free,  those 
who  do  not  feel  categorical  impulses,  the  impulse 
to  treat  wife  and  child  gently  and  procure  their 
happiness.  Men  will  not  indefinitely  draw  their 
pay  on  a  Friday  and  drink  half  of  it  by  Sunday 
night.  Their  wages  will  be  subject  to  liens  cor- 
responding to  the  number  of  their  children.  These 
liens  may  not  be  light,  and  may  extend  long  be- 
yond the  nominal  majority  of  the  child.  I  suspect 
that  after  sixteen,  or  some  other  early  age,  chil- 
dren will,  if  they  choose,  be  entitled  to  leave  home 
201 


THE   BREAK-UP   OF   THE   FAMILY 

for  some  municipal  hostel  where  for  a  while  their 
parents  will  be  compelled  to  pay  for  their  support. 
It  will  be  asked,  "  Why  should  a  parent  pay  for  the 
support  of  a  child  who  will  not  live  in  his  house  ?" 
It  seems  to  me  that  the  chief  reply  is,  "Why  did 
you  have  that  child?"  There  is  another,  too: 
"By  what  right  should  this  creature  for  whom 
you  are  responsible  be  tied  to  a  house  into  which 
it  has  been  called  unconsulted?  Why  should  it 
submit  to  your  moral  and  religious  views  ?  to  your 
friends?  to  your  wall-paper?"  It  is  a  strong  case, 
and  I  believe  that,  as  time  goes  on  and  the  law  is 
strengthened,  the  young  will  more  and  more  tend 
to  leave  their  homes.  In  good,  liberal  homes  they 
will  stay,  but  the  others  they  will  abandon,  and  I 
believe  that  no  social  philosopher  will  regret  that 
children  should  leave  homes  where  they  stay  only 
because  they  are  fed  and  not  because  they  love. 

So,  flying  apart  by  a  sort  of  centrifugal  force, 
the  family  will  become  looser  and  looser,  until  it 
exists  only  for  those  who  care  for  one  another 
enough  to  maintain  the  association.  It  cannot 
remain  as  it  is,  with  its  right  of  insult,  its  claim 
to  society ;  we  can  have  no  more  slave  daughters 
and  slave  wives,  nor  shall  we  chain  together  people 
who  spy  out  one  another's  loves  and  crush  one 

202 


THE  BREAK-UP  OF  THE  FAMILY 

another's  youth.  The  family  is  immortal,  but 
the  immortals  have  many  incarnations  —  from 
Pan  and  Bacchus  sprang  Lucifer,  Son  of  the 
Morning.  There  is  a  time  to  come  —  better  than 
this  because  it  is  to  come  —  when  the  family, 
humanized,  will  be  human. 


203 


VII 

SOME  NOTES  ON  MARRIAGE 


The  questioning  mind,  sole  apparatus  of  the  socio- 
psychologist,  has  of  late  years  often  concerned  itself 
with  marriage.  Marriage  always  was  discussed, 
long  before  Mrs.  Mona  Caird  suggested  in  the 
respectable  'eighties  that  it  might  be  a  failure,  but 
it  is  certain  that  with  the  coming  of  Mr.  Bernard 
Shaw  the  institution  which  was  questioned  grew 
almost  questionable.  Indeed,  marriage  was  so 
much  attacked  that  it  almost  became  popular,  and 
some  believe  that  the  war  may  cut  it  free  from  the 
stake  of  martyrdom.  Perhaps,  but  setting  aside 
all  prophecies,  revolts  and  sermons,  one  thing  does 
appear :  marriage  is  on  its  trial  before  a  hesitating 
jury.  The  judge  has  set  this  jury  several  ques- 
tions :  Is  marriage  a  normal  institution  ?  Is  it  so 
normal  as  to  deserve  to  continue  in  a  state  of  civili- 

204 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

zation?  given  that  civilization's  function  is  to  crush 
nature. 

A  thing  is  not  necessarily  good  because  it  exists, 
for  scarlet  fever,  nationality,  art  critics,  and  black 
beetles  exist,  yet  all  will  be  rooted  out  in  the  course 
of  enlightenment.  Marriage  may  be  an  invention 
of  the  male  to  secure  himself  a  woman  freehold,  or, 
at  least,  in  fee  simple.  It  may  be  an  invention  of 
the  female  designed  to  secure  a  somewhat  tyran- 
nical protection  and  a  precarious  sustenance. 
Marriage  may  be  afflicted  with  inherent  diseases, 
with  antiquity,  with  spiritual  indigestion,  or  starva- 
tion :  among  these  confusions  the  socio-psycholo- 
gist,  swaying  between  the  solidities  of  polygamy 
and  the  shadows  of  theosophical  union,  loses  all 
idea  of  the  norm.  There  may  be  no  norm,  either  in 
Christian  marriage,  polygamy,  Meredithian  mar- 
riage leases;  there  may  be  a  norm  only  in  the 
human  aspiration  to  utility  and  to  happiness. 

For  we  know  very  little  save  the  aimlessness  of  a 
life  that  may  be  paradise,  or  its  vestibule,  or  an 
instalment  of  some  other  region.  Still  there  is  a 
key,  no  doubt :  the  will  to  happiness,  which,  alas  ! 
opens  doors  most  often  into  empty  rooms.  It  is  the 
search  for  happiness  that  has  envenomed  marriage 
and  made  it  so  difficult  to  bear,  because  in  the  first 
205 


SOME   NOTES  ON  MARRIAGE 

rapture  it  is  so  hard  to  realize  that  there  are  no 
ways  of  living,  but  only  ways  of  dying  more  or  less 
agreeably. 

Personally,  I  believe  that  with  all  its  faults,  with 
its  crudity,  its  stupidity  shot  with  pain,  marriage 
responds  to  a  human  need  to  live  together  and  to 
foster  the  species,  and  that  though  we  will  make  it 
easier  and  approach  free  union,  we  shall  always  have 
something  of  the  sort.  And  so,  because  I  believe 
it  eternal,  I  think  it  necessary. 

But  why  does  it  fare  so  ill  ?  Why  is  it  that  when 
we  see  in  a  restaurant  a  middle-aged  couple, 
mutually  interested  and  gay,  we  say :  "I  wonder  if 
they  are  married?"  Why  do  so  many  marriages 
persist  when  the  love  knot  slips,  and  bandages 
fall  away  from  the  eyes?  Strange  cases  come  to 
my  mind :  M  6  and  M  22,  always  apart,  except  to 
quarrel,  meanly  jealous,  jealously  mean,  yet  full  of 
affability  —  to  strangers ;  M  4  and  many  others,  all 
poor,  where  at  once  the  wife  has  decayed;  when 
you  see  youth  struggling  in  vain  on  the  features 
under  the  cheap  hat,  you  need  not  look  at  the  left 
hand:  she  is  married.  It  is  true  that  however 
much  they  may  decay  in  pride  of  body  and  pride  of 
life,  when  all  allowances  are  made  for  outer  gaiety 
and  grace,  the  married  of  forty  are  a  sounder, 
206 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

deeper  folk  than  their  celibate  contemporaries. 
Often  bled  white  by  self-sacrifice,  they  have  always 
learnt  a  little  of  the  world's  lesson,  which  is  to 
know  how  to  live  without  happiness.  They  may 
have  been  vampires,  but  they  have  not  gone  to  sleep 
in  the  cotton  wool  of  their  celibacy.  Even  hateful, 
the  other  sex  has  meant  something  to  them.  It 
has  meant  that  the  woman  must  hush  the  children 
because  father  has  come  home,  but  it  has  also 
meant  that  she  must  change  her  frock,  because 
even  father  is  a  man.  It  has  taught  the  man  that 
there  are  flowers  in  the  world,  which  so  few  bache- 
lors know;  it  has  taught  the  woman  to  interest 
herself  in  something  more  than  a  fried  egg,  if  only 
to  win  the  favor  of  her  lord.  Marriage  may  not 
teach  the  wish  to  please,  but  it  teaches  the  avoid- 
ance of  offence,  which,  in  a  civilization  governed 
by  negative  commandments,  is  the  root  of  private 
citizenship. 


For  the  closer  examination  of  the  marriage 
problem,  I  am  considering  altogether  one  hundred 
and  fifty  cases ;  my  acquaintance  with  them  varies 
between  intimate  and  slight.  I  have  thrown  out 
one  hundred  and  sixteen  cases  where  the  evidence 
207 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

is  inadequate :  the  following  are  therefore  not 
loose  generalizations,  but  one  thing  I  assert :  those 
one  hundred  and  sixteen  cases  do  not  contain  a 
successful  marriage.  Out  of  the  remaining  thirty- 
four,  the  following  results  arise : 

Apparently  successful    .    .         ....  9 

Husband  unfaithful 5 

Wife  unfaithful 10 

Husband  dislikes  wife 3 

Wife  dislikes  husband 7 

Success  is  a  vague  word,  and  I  attempt  no  defini- 
tion, but  we  know  a  happy  marriage  when  we  see 
it,  as  we  do  a  work  of  art. 

It  should  be  observed  that  when  one  or  both 
parties  are  unfaithful,  the  marriage  is  not  always 
unsuccessful,  but  it  generally  is;  moreover,  there 
are  difficulties  in  establishing  proportion,  for 
women  are  infinitely  more  confidential  on  this 
subject  than  are  men;  they  also  frequently  exag- 
gerate dislike,  which  men  cloak  in  indifference. 
Still,  making  all  these  allowances,  I  am  unable 
to  find  more  than  nine  cases  of  success,  say  six  per 
cent.  This  percentage  gives  rise  to  platitudinous 
thoughts  on  the  horrid  gamble  of  life. 

Two  main  conclusions  appear  to  follow:  that 
208 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

more  wives  than  husbands  break  their  marriage 
vows,  and  (this  may  be  a  cause  as  well  as  an  effect) 
that  more  wives  than  husbands  are  disappointed  in 
their  hopes.  This  is  natural  enough,  as  nearly  all 
women  come  ignorant  to  a  state  requiring  cool 
knowledge  and  armored  only  with  illusion  against 
truth,  while  men  enter  it  with  experience,  if  not 
with  tolerance  born  of  disappointment.  I  realize 
that  these  two  conclusions  are  opposed  to  the  popu- 
lar belief  that  a  good  home  and  a  child  or  two  are 
enough  to  make  a  woman  content.  (A  bad  home 
and  a  child  or  nine  is  not  considered  by  the  popular 
mind.) 

There  is  no  male  clamor  against  marriage,  from 
which  one  might  conclude  that  man  is  fairly  well 
served.  No  doubt  he  attaches  less  weight  to  the 
link ;  even  love  matters  to  him  less  than  to  women. 
I  do  not  want  to  exaggerate,  for  Romeo  is  a  peer  to 
Juliet,  but  it  is  possible  to  conceive  Romeo  on  the 
Stock  Exchange,  very  busy  in  pursuit  of  money 
and  rank,  while  Juliet  would  remain  merely  Juliet. 
Juliet  is  not  on  the  Stock  Exchange.  If  business 
is  good,  she  has  nothing  to  do,  and  if  Satan  does  not 
turn  her  hands  to  evil  works,  he  may  turn  them  to 
good  ones,  which  will  not  improve  matters  very 
much.  Juliet,  idle,  can  do  nothing  but  seek  a  deep 
209 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

and  satisfying  love :  mostly  it  is  a  lifelong  occupa- 
tion. All  this  makes  Juliet  very  difficult,  and  no 
astronomer  will  give  her  the  moon. 

Romeo  is  in  better  plight,  for  he  makes  less 
demands.  Let  Juliet  be  a  good  housekeeper, 
fairly  good  looking  and  good  tempered ;  not  too 
stupid,  so  as  to  understand  him;  not  too  clever, 
so  that  he  may  understand  her ;  such  that  he  may 
think  her  as  good  as  other  men's  wives,  and  he  is 
satisfied.  The  sentimental  business  is  done;  it 
is  " Farewell!  Farewell!  ye  lovely  young  girls, 
we're  off  to  Rio  Bay."  So  to  work  —  to  money  — 
to  ambition  —  to  sport  —  to  anything  —  but  Juliet. 
While  he  forgets  her,  the  modern  woman  grows 
every  day  more  attractive,  more  intellectually 
vivid.  She  demands  of  her  partner  that  he  should 
give  her  stimulants,  and  he  gives  her  soporifics. 
She  asks  him  for  far  too  much ;  she  is  cruel,  she  is 
unjust,  and  she  is  magnificent.  She  has  not  the 
many  children  on  whom  in  simpler  days  her  mother 
used  to  vent  an  exacting  affection,  so  she  vents  it  on 
her  husband. 

Yet  it  is  not  at  first  sight  evident  why  so  easily 

in  England  a  lover  turns  into  a  husband,  that  is  to 

say,  into  a  vaguely  disagreeable  person  who  can  be 

coaxed  into  paying  bills.     I  suspect  there  are  many 

210 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

influences  corrupting  marriage,  and  most  of  them 
are  mutual  in  their  action ;  they  are  of  the  essence 
of  the  contract;  they  are  the  mental  reservations 
of  the  marriage  oath.  So  far  as  I  can  see,  they  fall 
into  sixteen  classes  :  — 

i.  The  waning  of  physical  attraction. 

2.  Diverging  tastes. 

3.  Being  too  much  together. 

4.  Being  too  much  apart.  (There  is  no  pleasing  this 
institution.) 

5.  The  sense  of  mutual  property. 

6.  The  sense  of  the  irremediable. 

7.  Children. 

8.  The  cost  of  living. 

9.  Rivalry. 

10.  Polygamy  in  men  and  " second  blooming"  in  women. 

11.  Coarseness  and  talkativeness. 

12.  Sulkiness. 

13.  Dull  lives. 

14.  Petty  intolerance. 

15.  Stupidity. 

16.  Humour  and  aggressiveness. 

There  are  other  influences,  but  they  are  not  easily 
ascertained  ;  sometimes  they  are  subtle. 

M  28  said  to  me:  "My  husband's  grievance 
against  me  is  that  I  have  a  cook  who  can't  cook ; 
my  grievance  against  him  is  that  he  married  me." 

211 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

Indeed,  sentiment  and  the  scullery  painfully 
represent  the  divergence  of  the  two  sexes.  One 
should  not  exaggerate  the  scullery ;  the  philosopher 
who  said  "Feed  the  brute"  was  not  entirely  wrong, 
but  it  is  quite  easy  for  a  woman  to  ignore  the 
emotional  pabulum  that  many  a  man  requires.  It 
is  quite  true  that  "the  lover  in  the  husband  may 
be  lost ",  but  very  few  women  realize  that  the  wife 
can  blot  out  the  mistress.  Case  M  19  confessed 
that  she  always  wore  out  her  old  clothes  at  home, 
and  she  was  surprised  when  I  suggested  that 
though  her  husband  was  no  critic  of  clothes,  he 
might  often  wonder  why  she  did  not  look  as  well  as 
other  women.  Many  modern  wives  know  this ;  in 
them  the  desire  to  please  never  quite  dies ;  between 
lovers,  it  is  violent  and  continuous ;  between  hus- 
band and  wife,  it  is  sometimes  maintained  only  by 
shame  and  self-respect :  there  are  old  slippers  that 
one  can't  wear,  even  before  one's  husband. 

The  problem  arises  very  early  with  the  waning  of 
physical  attraction.  I  am  not  thinking  only  of  the 
bad  and  hasty  marriages  so  frequent  in  young 
America,  but  of  the  English  marriages,  where  both 
parties  come  together  in  a  state  of  sentimental 
excitement  born  of  ignorance  and  rather  puritanical 
restraint.  Europeans  wed  less  wisely  than  the 
212 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

Hindoo  and  the  Turk,  for  these  realize  their  wives 
as  Woman.  Generally  they  have  never  seen  a 
woman  of  their  own  class,  and  so  she  is  a  revelation, 
she  is  indeed  the  bulbul,  while  he,  being  the  first, 
is  the  King  of  men.  But  the  Europeans  have 
mixed  too  freely;  they  have  skimmed,  they  have 
flirted,  they  have  been  so  ashamed  of  true  emotion 
that  they  have  made  the  Song  of  Solomon  into  a 
vaudeville  ditty.  They  have  watered  the  wine  of 
life. 

So  when  at  last  the  wine  of  life  is  poured  out,  the 
draught  is  not  new,  for  they  have  quaffed  before 
many  an  adulterated  potion  and  have  long  pre- 
tended that  the  wine  of  life  is  milk.  For  a  moment 
there  is  a  difference,  and  they  recognize  that  the  in- 
credible can  happen ;  each  thinks  the  time  has  come : 

"Wenn  ich  dem  Augenblick  werd  sagen: 
Verweile  dock,  du  hist  so  schon  ..." 

Then  the  false  exaltation  subsides :  not  even  a 
saint  could  stand  a  daily  revelation ;  the  revelation 
becomes  a  sacramental  service,  the  sacramental 
service  a  routine,  and  then,  little  by  little,  there  is 
nothing.  But  nature,  as  usual  abhorring  a  vacuum, 
does  not  allow  the  newly  opened  eyes  to  dwell  upon 
a  void;  it  leaves  them  clear,  it  allows  them  to 
213 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

compare.  One  day  two  demi-gods  gaze  into  the 
eyes  of  two  mortals  and  resent  their  fugitive 
quality.  Another  day  two  mortals  gaze  into  the 
eyes  of  two  others,  whom  suddenly  they  discover 
to  be  demi-gods.  Some  resist  the  trickery  of  na- 
ture, some  succumb,  some  are  fortunate,  some  are 
strong.  But  the  two  who  once  were  united  are 
divorced  by  the  three  judges  of  the  Human  Supreme 
Court :  Contrast,  Habit,  and  Change. 

Time  cures  no  ills ;  sometimes  it  provides  poul- 
tices, often  salt,  for  wounds.  Time  gives  man  his 
work,  which  he  always  had,  but  did  not  realize 
in  the  days  of  his  enchantment ;  but  to  woman  time 
seldom  offers  anything  except  her  old  drug,  love. 
Oh !  there  are  other  things,  children,  visiting  cards, 
frocks,  skating  rinks,  Christian  Science  teas,  and 
Saturday  anagrams,  but  all  these  are  but  froth. 
Brilliant,  worldly,  hard-eyed,  urgent,  pleasure- 
drugged,  she  still  believes  there  is  an  exquisite 
reply  to  the  question : 

"Will  the  love  you  are  so  rich  in 
Light  a  fire  in  the  kitchen, 
And  will  the  little  God  of  Love  turn  the  spit,  spit,  spit?" 

Only  the  little  God  of  Love  does  not  call,  and  the 
butcher  does. 

214 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

It  is  her  own  fault.  It  is  always  one's  own 
fault  when  one  has  illusions,  though  it  is,  in  a 
way,  one's  privilege.  She  is  attracted  to  a  strange 
man  because  he  is  tall  and  beautiful,  or  short  and 
ugly  and  has  a  clever  head,  or  looks  like  a  barber ; 
he  comes  of  different  stock,  from  another  country, 
out  of  another  class  —  and  these  two  strangers 
suddenly  attempt  to  blend  a  total  of,  say,  fifty-five 
years  of  different  lives  into  a  single  one  !  Gold  will 
melt,  but  it  needs  a  very  fierce  fire,  and  as  soon  as 
the  fire  is  withdrawn,  it  hardens  again.  Seldom  is 
there  anything  to  make  it  fluid  once  more,  for  the 
attraction,  once  primary,  grows  with  habit  com- 
monplace, with  contrast  unsatisfactory,  with  growth 
unsuitable.  The  lovers  are  twenty,  then  in  love, 
then  old. 

It  is  true  that  habit  affects  man  not  in  the  same 
way  as  it  does  woman ;  after  conquest  man  seems  to 
grow  indifferent,  while,  curiously  enough,  habit  often 
binds  woman  closer  to  man,  breeds  in  her  one  single 
fierce  desire:  to  make  him  love  her  more.  Man 
buys  cash  down,  woman  on  the  instalment  plan, 
horribly  suspecting  now  and  then  that  she  is  really 
buying  on  the  hire  system.  A  rather  literary  case, 
Case  Mn,  said  to  me :  "I  am  much  more  in  love 
with  him  than  I  was  in  the  beginning ;  he  seemed 
215 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

so  strange  and  hard  then.  Now  I  love  him,  but 
...  he  seems  tired  of  me ;  he  knows  me  too  well. 
I  wonder  whether  we  only  fall  in  love  with  men  just 
about  the  time  that  they  get  sick  of  us." 

Her  surmise  may  be  correct :  there  is  no  record 
of  the  after-life  of  Perseus  and  Andromeda,  and  it  is 
more  romantic  not  to  delve  into  it.  Neither  they 
nor  any  other  lovers  could  hope  to  maintain  the 
early  exaltations.  I  am  reminded  of  a  well-known 
picture  by  Mr.  Charles  Dana  Gibson,  showing  two 
lovers  in  the  snow  by  the  sea.  They  are  gazing 
into  each  other's  eyes;  below  is  written:  "They 
began  saying  good-by  last  summer."  Does  any 
one  doubt  that  a  visit  to  the  minister,  say,  in  the 
autumn,  might  have  altered  the  complexion  of 
things?  And  no  wonder,  for  they  were  the 
unknown,  and  through  marriage  would  become  the 
known.  It  is  only  the  unknown  that  tempts, 
until  one  realizes  that  the  unknown  and  the  known 
are  the  same  thing,  as  Socrates  realized  that  life 
and  death  are  the  same  thing,  mere  converses  of 
a  single  proposition.  It  is  the  unknown  makes 
strange  associates,  attracts  men  to  ugly  women, 
slatterns  to  dandies.  It  is  not  only  contrast,  it  is 
the  suspicion  that  the  unexpected  outside  must 
conceal  something.     The  breaking  down  of  that 

216 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

concealment  is  conquest,  and  after  marriage  there 
is  no  conquest ;  there  is  only  security :  who  could 
live  dangerously  in  Brooklyn  ?  Once  licensed,  love 
is  official ;  its  gifts  are  doled  out  as  sugar  by  a 
grocer,  and  sometimes  short  weighed.  Men  suffer 
from  this  and  many  go  dully  wondering  what  it  is 
they  miss  that  once  they  had;  they  go  rather 
heavy,  rather  dense,  cumbrously  gallant,  asking 
to  be  understood,  and  whimpering  about  it  in  a 
way  that  would  be  ridiculous  if  it  were  not  a  little 
pathetic.  Meanwhile,  their  wives  wonder  why  all 
is  not  as  it  was.  It  is  no  use  telling  them  that  noth- 
ing can  ever  be  as  it  was,  that  as  mankind  by  living 
decays,  the  emotions  and  outlook  must  change; 
to  have  had  a  delight  is  a  deadly  thing,  for  one 
wants  it  again,  just  as  it  was,  as  a  child  demands 
always  the  same  story.  It  must  be  the  same 
delight,  and  none  who  feel  emotion  will  ever  under- 
stand that  "the  race  of  delights  is  short  and  pleas- 
ures have  mutable  faces." 

It  is  true  that  early  joys  may  unite,  especially 
if  one  can  believe  that  there  is  only  one  fountain  of 
joy.  I  think  of  many  cases,  —  M  5,  M  33, — 
where  there  is  only  one  cry  :  "  It  is  cruel  to  have  had 
delights,  for  the  glamour  of  the  past  makes  the  day 
darker."  They  will  live  to  see  the  past  differently 
217 


SOME   NOTES  ON  MARRIAGE 

when  they  are  older  and  the  present  matters  less. 
But  until  then,  the  dead  joy  poisons  the  animate 
present ;  the  man  must  drift  away  to  his  occupa- 
tion, for  there  is  nothing  else,  and  the  woman  must 
harden  by  wanting  what  she  cannot  have.  She 
will  part  herself  from  him  more  thoroughly  by 
hardening,  for  one  cannot  count  upon  a  woman's 
softness;  it  can  swiftly  be  transmuted  into  mali- 
cious hatred. 


This  picture  of  pain  is  the  rule  where  two  strangers 
wed,  but  there  are  some  who,  taking  a  partner 
discover  a  friend,  many  who  develop  agreeable 
acquaintanceship.  Passion  may  be  diverted  into  a 
common  interest,  say  in  conchology ;  if  people  are 
not  too  stupid,  not  too  egotistic,  they  very  soon 
discover  in  each  other  a  little  of  the  human  good 
will  that  will  not  die.  They  must,  or  they  fail. 
For  whereas  in  the  beginning  foolish  lips  may  be 
kissed,  a  little  later  they  must  learn  to  speak  some 
wisdom.  In  this  men  are  most  exacting ;  they  are 
most  inclined  to  demand  that  women  should  hold 
up  to  their  faces  the  mirror  of  flattery,  while  women 
seem  more  tolerant,  often  because  they  do  not 
understand,  very  often  because  they  do  not  care, 

218 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

and  echo  the  last  words  of  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw's 
Ann:  " Never  mind  her,  dear,  go  on  talking;" 
perhaps  because  they  have  had  to  tolerate  so  much 
in  the  centuries  that  they  have  grown  expert. 
One  may,  however,  tolerate  whilst  strongly  dis- 
approving, and  one  must  disapprove  when  one's 
egotism  is  continually  insulted  by  the  other  party's 
egotism.  There  is  very  little  room  for  twice  "I" 
in  what  ought  to  have  been  "We",  and  we  nearly 
all  feel  that  the  axis  of  the  earth  passes  through  our 
bodies.  So  the  common  interests  of  two  egotisms 
can  alone  make  of  these  one  egotism.  The  veriest 
trifle  will  serve,  and  pray  do  not  smile  at  Case  M  4, 
who  forgive  each  other  all  wrongs  when  they  find 
for  dinner  a  risotto  a  la  Milanaise.  A  slightly 
spasmodic  interest,  and  one  not  to  be  compared 
with  a  common  taste  for  golf,  or  motoring,  or 
entertaining,  but  still  it  is  not  to  be  despised.  It  is 
so  difficult  to  pick  a  double  interest  from  the  welter 
of  things  that  people  do  alone ;  it  is  so  difficult  for 
wives  truly  to  sympathize  with  games,  business, 
politics,  newspapers,  inventions ;  most  women  hate 
all  that.  And  it  is  still  more  difficult,  just  because 
man  is  man  and  master,  for  him  really  to  care  for 
the  fashions,  for  gossip,  for  his  wife's  school  friends, 
and  especially  her  relations,  for  tea  parties,  tennis 
219 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

tournaments  at  the  Rectory,  lectures  at  the  Mutual 
Improvement  Association,  servants'  misdeeds,  and 
growths  in  the  garden.     Most  men  hate  all  that. 
People  hold  amazing  conversations : 
She:  "Do  you  know,  dear,  I  saw  Mrs.  Johnson 

again  to-day  with  that  man." 
He:    (Trying  hard)  "Oh!    yes,  the   actor  fellow, 

you  mean.'' 
She:   (Reproachfully)     "No,    of     course    not,     I 

never  said  he  was  an  actor.     He's  the  new 

engineer  at  the  mine,  the  one  who  came  from 

Mexico." 
He  :     "  Oh  !  yes,  that  reminds  me,  did  you  go  to  the 

library  and  get  me  Roosevelt's  book  on  the 

Amazon?" 
She :  "No  dear,  I'm  sorry  I  forgot.     You  see  I  had 

such  a  busy  day,  and  I  couldn't  make  up 

my  mind  between  those  two  hats.     The 

very   big    one   and    the   very   small    one. 

You  know.     Now  tell  me  what  you  really 

think  — "  and  so  on. 
It  is  exactly  like  a  Tchekoff  play.  They  make 
desperate  efforts  to  be  interested  in  each  other's 
affairs,  and  sometimes  they  succeed,  for  they  manage 
to  stand  each  other's  dullness.  They  assert  their 
egotism  in  turns.  He  tells  the  same  stories  several 
220 


SOME   NOTES    ON   MARRIAGE 

times.  He  takes  her  for  a  country  walk  and  forgets 
to  give  her  tea,  and  she  never  remembers  that  he 
hates  her  dearest  friend  Mabel.  Where  the  rift 
grows  more  profound  is  when  trifles  such  as  these 
are  overlooked,  and  particularly  where  a  man  has 
work  that  he  loves,  or  to  which  he  is  used,  which  is 
much  the  same  thing.  In  early  days  the  woman's 
attitude  to  a  man's  work  varies  a  good  deal,  but  she 
generally  suspects  it  a  little.  She  may  tolerate  it 
because  she  loves  him,  and  all  that  is  his  is  noble. 
Later,  if  this  work  is  very  profitable,  or  if  it  is 
work  which  leads  to  honour,  she  may  take  a  pride 
in  it,  but  even  then  she  will  generally  grudge  it 
the  time  and  the  energy  it  costs.  She  loves  him, 
not  his  work.  She  will  seldom  confess  this,  even 
to  herself,  but  she  will  generally  lay  down  two 
commandments : 

i.   Thou  shalt  love  me. 

2.   Thou  shalt  succeed  so  that  I  may  love  thee. 

All  this  is  not  manifest,  but  it  is  there.  It  is 
there  even  in  the  days  of  courtship,  when  a  man's 
work,  a  man's  clothes,  a  man's  views  on  bimetal- 
lism are  sacred ;  in  those  days,  the  woman  must 
kowtow  to  the  man's  work,  just  as  he  must  keep 
on  good  terms  with  her  pet  dog.  But  the  time 
almost  invariably  comes  when  the  man  kicks  the  pet 
221 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

dog,  because  pet  dogs  are  madly  irritating  some- 
times —  and  so  is  a  man's  work.  There  is  some- 
thing self -protective  in  this,  for  work  is  so  domineer- 
ing. I  should  not  be  at  all  surprised  to  hear  that 
Galatea  saw  to  it  that  Pygmalion  never  made 
another  statue.  (On  second  thoughts  it  strikes 
me  that  there  might  be  other  reasons  for  that.) 

It  is  true  that  Pygmalion  was  an  artist,  and  these 
are  proverbially  difficult  husbands  :  after  an  hour's 
work  an  artist  will  "  sneer,  backbite  and  speak 
daggers."  Art  is  a  vampire,  and  it  will  gladly 
gobble  up  a  wife  as  well  as  a  husband,  but  the  wife 
must  not  do  any  gobbling.  She  does  not  always 
try  to,  and  there  are  many  in  London  who  follow 
their  artist  husbands  rather  like  sandwichmen 
between  two  boards,  but  they  are  of  a  trampled 
breed,  indigenous,  I  suspect,  to  England.  I  think 
they  arise  but  little  in  America,  where,  as  an  Ameri- 
can said  to  me,  "women  labor  to  advance  them- 
selves along  a  road  paved  with  discarded  hus- 
bands." (This  is  an  American's  statement,  not 
mine,  so  I  ask  the  Reverend  'John  Bootfeller, 
President  of  the  Kansas  and  Nevada  Society 
for  the  Propagation  of  the  Intellect,  to  spare 
me  his  denunciations.) 

But  leaving  aside  such  important  things  as  per- 
222 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

sonal  pettinesses,  which  too  few  think  important,  it 
must  be  acknowledged  that  women  seldom  conceive 
the  passion  for  art  that  can  inflame  a  man.  They 
very  seldom  conceive  a  passion  for  anything  except 
passion,  —  an  admirable  tendency  for  which  they 
blush  as  one  does  for  all  one's  natural  manifesta- 
tions. They  hardly  ever  care  for  philosophy ;  they 
generally  hate  politics,  but  they  nearly  always  love 
votes.  They  are  quite  as  irritating  in  that  way  as 
men,  who  almost  invariably  adore  politics  and 
detest  realities,  sometimes  love  science  and  generally 
prefer  record  railway  runs.  But  where  such  an 
interest  as  a  science  or  an  art  has  reigned  supreme 
in  a  man,  and  reasserts  itself  after  marriage,  she 
recognizes  her  enemy,  the  serpent,  for  is  he  not  the 
symbol  of  wisdom?  Invariably  he  rears  his  head 
when  the  love  fever  has  subsided.  Woman's 
impulse  is  more  artistic  than  man's,  but  it  seldom 
touches  art ;  her  artistic  impulse  is  not  yet  one  of 
high  grade ;  she  is  the  flower  arranger  rather  than 
the  flower  painter,  the  flower  painter  rather  than 
just  the  painter.  But  this  instinct  that  is  in  all 
women  and  in  so  few  men  avails  just  enough  to 
make  them  discontented,  while  the  great  instinct 
that  is  in  a  few  men  is  always  enough  to  make  them 
wretched. 

223 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

It  would  not  be  so  bad  if  they  had  not  to  live 
together,  but  social  custom  has  decided  that  couples 
must  forsake  their  separate  ways  and  evermore 
follow  the  same.  Most  follow  the  common  path 
easily  enough,  because  most  follow  the  first  path 
that  offers,  but  many  grumble  and  cast  longing  eyes 
at  side  tracks  or  would  return  to  the  place  whence 
they  came.  They  cannot  do  so  because  it  is  not 
done,  because  other  feet  have  not  broken  paths 
so  wide  that  they  shall  seem  legitimate.  When 
husband  and  wife  care  no  longer  for  their  common 
life,  the  only  remedy  is  to  part :  then  the  contra- 
dictory strain  that  is  in  all  of  us  will  reassert  itself 
and  make  them  rebound  towards  each  other.  If  the 
law  were  to  edict  that  man  and  wife  should  never 
be  together  for  more  than  six  months  in  the  year, 
it  would  be  broken  every  day,  and  men  and  women 
would  stand  hunger  and  stripes  to  come  together 
for  twelve  months  in  twelve.  If  love  of  home  were 
made  a  crime,  a  family  life  would  arise  more  touch- 
ing than  anything  Queen  Victoria  ever  dreamed. 
But  from  the  point  of  view  of  a  barbarous  present, 
this  would  never  do,  for  the  very  worst  that  can 
happen  to  two  people  is  to  reach  the  fullness  of 
their  desire.  The  young  man  who  raves  at  the 
young  woman's  feet:   "Oh!   that  I  were  by  your 

224 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

side  day  and  night !  Oh !  that  ever  I  could  watch 
you  move !  I  grudge  the  night  the  eight  hours  in 
which  you  sleep"  —  Well,  that  young  man  is 
generally  successful  in  his  wooing  and  gets  what  he 
wants;  a  little  later  he  gets  a  little  more.  For 
proximity  is  a  dangerous  thing ;  it  enables  one  to 
know  another  rather  well :  full  knowledge  of  man- 
kind is  seldom  edifying.  One  sees  too  much,  one 
sees  too  close ;  a  professional  Don  Juan  who  hon- 
ors me  with  his  friendship  told  me  that  he  has  an 
infallible  remedy  against  falling  in  love  more  often 
than  three  times  a  day:  " Stand  as  close  to  your 
charmer  as  you  can,  look  at  her  well,  very  well,  at 
every  feature ;  watch  her  attitudes,  listen  to  every 
tone  of  her  voice ;  then  you  will  discover  something 
unpleasant,  and  you  will  be  saved."  That  is  a 
little  what  happens  in  marriage ;  for  ever  and  ever 
people  are  together,  hearing  each  other,  watching 
each  other.     Listen  to  M  14  : 

"I  really  was  very  much  in  love  with  him  and 
only  just  at  the  end  of  the  engagement  did  I  notice 
how  hard  he  blew  his  nose  After  we  were  married, 
I  thought :  l  Oh !  don't  be  so  silly  and  notice  such 
little  things,  he's  such  a  splendid  fellow.'  A  little 
later  —  'Oh  !  I  do  wish  he  wouldn't  blow  his  nose 
like  that,  it  drives  me  mad.'  Now  I  find  myself 
225 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

listening  and  telling  myself  with  an  awful  feeling  of 
doom :  'He's  going  to  blow  his  nose !'  " 

(She  never  tells  him  that  he  trumpets  like  an 
elephant.  She  fears  to  offend  him.  She  prefers 
to  stand  there,  exasperated  and  chafed.  One  day 
he  will  trumpet  down  the  walls  of  her  Jericho.) 

There  are  awful  little  things  between  two  people. 
Here  are  some  of  them : 

M  43.  When  tired,  the  wife  has  a  peculiar  yawn, 
roughly:  "Hoo-hoo!  Hoo-hoo!',  The  husband 
hears  it  coming,  and  something  curls  within  him. 

M  98.  Every  morning  in  his  bath  the  husband 
sings  :  "  There  is  a  fountain  fill'd  with  blood  drawn 
from  Emmanuel's  veins,"  always  the  same. 

M  124.  The  wife  buys  shoes  a  quarter  size  too 
small  and  always  slips  them  off  under  the  table  at 
dinner.  Then  she  loses  them  and  develops  great 
agitation.  This  tills  her  husband  with  an  unac- 
countable rage. 

M  68.  The  wife  is  afflicted  with  the  cliche  habit 
and  can  generally  sum  up  a  situation  by  phrases 
such  as:  "All  is  not  gold  that  glitters."  Or, 
"Such  is  life."  Or,  "Well,  well,  it's  a  weary 
world."     The  husband  can  hear  them  coming. 

There  are  scores  of  these  little  cruel  things  which 
wear  away  love  as  surely  as  trickling  water  will  wear 

226 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

away  a  stone.  (Observe  how  contagious  cliches 
are !)  The  dilemma  is  horrible ;  if  the  offended 
party  speaks  out,  he  or  she  may  speak  out  much  too 
forcibly  and  raise  this  sort  of  train  of  thought : 
"He  didn't  seem  to  mind  when  we  were  engaged. 
He  loved  me  then,  and  little  things  didn't  matter. 
He  doesn't  love  me  now.  I  wonder  whether  he  is 
in  love  with  some  one  else.  Oh  !  I'm  so  unhappy." 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  one  does  not  speak  out 
forcibly,  or  does  not  speak  at  all,  the  offender  goes 
on  doing  it  for  the  rest  of  his  or  her  life,  and  there  is 
nothing  to  do  except  to  wait  until  one  has  got  used 
to  it  and  has  ceased  to  care.  But  by  that  time  one 
has  generally  ceased  to  care  for  the  offender. 

There  are  ideal  marriages  where  both  parties  aim 
at  perfection  and  are  willing  to  accept  mutual 
criticism.  But  there  is  something  a  little  callous 
in  this  form  of  self -improvement  society.  People 
who  are  too  much  together  are  always  making  notes, 
adding  up  in  their  hearts  bitter  little  adverse 
balances  with  which  they  will  one  day  confront  the 
fallen  lover.  Some  slight  offense  will  bring  up  the 
bill  of  arrears.  A  quarrel  about  a  forgotten  ticket 
will  give  life  to  the  cruel  thing  he  said  seven  years 
before  about  her  mother's  bonnets,  or  her  sudden 
dismissal  of  the  cook,  or  the  dreadful  day  when  he 
227 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

sat  on  the  eggs  in  the  train.  (Clumsy  brute!) 
All  these  things  pile  up  and  pile  up  until  they  form  a 
terrible,  towering  cairn  made  up  of  tiny  stones,  but 
of  great  total  weight,  just  as  an  avalanche  rests 
securely  upon  a  crest  until  a  whisper  releases  it. 
Nearly  all  marriages  are  in  a  state  of  permanent 
mobilization.  There  is  only  one  thing  to  do,  to 
remember  all  the  time  that  one  could  not  hope  to 
meet  one  quite  great  enough  to  be  one's  mate,  and 
that  this  is  the  best  the  world  can  do.  The  thought 
that  nobody  can  quite  understand  one  or  quite 
appreciate  one  arouses  a  delicious  sorrow  and  an 
enormous  pride. 


Too  much  together  is  bad,  and  too  much  apart 
may  be  worse.  As  I  suggested  before,  there  is  no 
pleasing  this  institution. 

It  is  easier  to  live  too  separate  than  too  close,  for 
one  comes  together  freshly,  and  marriage  feels  less 
irremediable  when  it  hardly  exists.  There  really 
are  couples  who  care  for  each  other  very  well,  who 
meet  in  a  country  house  and  say:  "What!  you 
here!  How  jolly!"  That  is  an  extreme  case. 
In  practice,  separateness  means  conjugal  acquaint- 
anceship. Different  pleasures,  different  friends, 
228 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

perhaps  different  worlds ;  indeed,  one  is  mutually 
fresh,  but  traveling  different  roads,  one  may  find 
that  there  is  nothing  in  common.  Of  two  evils,  it 
is  better  perhaps  to  be  too  intimate  than  too  dis- 
tant, because  there  are  many  irritating  things  that 
with  reminiscence  become  delightful.  The  dreadful 
day  when  he  sat  on  the  eggs  in  the  train  is  not 
entirely  dreadful,  for  he  looked  so  silly  when  he  stood 
up,  removing  the  eggs,  and  though  one  was  angry, 
one  vaguely  loved  him  for  having  made  a  fool  of 
himself.  (There  are  nine  and  sixty  ways  of  gaining 
affection,  and  one  of  them  is  to  be  a  good-tempered 
butt.) 

Separateness,  naturally,  cannot  coincide  with  the 
sense  of  mutual  property.  This  is  perhaps  the 
cause  of  the  greatest  unhappiness  in  marriage,  for 
so  many  forget  that  to  be  married  is  not  to  be  one. 
They  do  not  understand  that  however  much  they 
may  love,  whatever  delights  they  may  share,  what- 
ever common  ambitions  they  may  harbor,  what- 
ever they  hope,  or  endeavor,  or  pray,  two  people 
are  still  two  people.  Or  if  they  know  it,  they  say, 
"He  is  mine."  "She  is  mine."  If  one  could  give 
oneself  entirely,  it  would  be  well  enough,  but  how- 
ever much  one  may  want  to  do  so  one  cannot,  just 
because  one  is  the  axis  of  the  earth.  Because  one 
229 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

cannot,  one  will  not,  and  he  that  would  absorb 
will  never  forgive.  He  will  be  jealous,  he  will  be 
suspicious,  tyrannical,  he  will  watch  and  lay  traps, 
he  will  court  injury,  he  will  air  grievances,  because 
the  next  best  thing  to  complete  possession  is  railing 
at  his  impotency  to  conquer.  That  jealousy  is 
turned  against  everything,  against  work,  against 
art,  against  relatives,  friends,  dead  loves,  little 
children,  toy  dogs:  "Thou  shalt  have  none  other 
gods  but  me"  is  a  human  commandment. 

Men  do  not,  as  a  rule,  suffer  very  much  from  this 
desire  to  possess,  because  they  are  so  sure  that  they 
do  possess,  because  they  find  it  so  difficult  to  con- 
ceive that  their  wife  can  find  any  other  man 
attractive.  They  are  too  well  accustomed  to  being 
courted,  even  if  they  are  old  and  repulsive,  because 
they  have  power  and  money ;  only  they  think  it  is 
because  they  are  men.  Beyond  a  jealous  care  for 
their  wives'  fidelity,  which  I  suspect  arises  mainly 
from  the  feeling  that  an  unfaithful  wife  is  a  criti- 
cism, they  do  not  ask  very  much.  But  women 
suffer  more  deeply  because  they  know  that  man 
has  lavished  on  them  for  centuries  a  condescending 
admiration,  that  the  king  who  lays  his  crown  at 
their  feet  knows  that  his  is  the  crown  to  give. 
While  men  possess  by  right  of  possession,  women 
230 


SOME  NOTES  ON  MARRIAGE 

possess  only  by  right  of  precarious  conquest.  They 
feel  it  very  bitterly,  this  fugitive  empire,  and  their 
greatest  tragedy  is  to  find  themselves  growing  a 
little  older,  uncertain  of  their  power,  for  they 
know  they  have  only  one  power;  they  are  afraid, 
as  age  comes,  of  losing  their  man,  while  I  have  never 
heard  of  a  husband  afraid  of  losing  his  wife,  or  able 
to  repress  his  surprise  if  she  forsook  him. 

It  would  not  matter  so  much  if  the  feeling  of 
property  were  that  of  a  good  landlord,  who  likes 
to  see  his  property  develop  and  grow  beautiful, 
but  mutual  property  is  the  feeling  of  the  slave 
owner.  Sometimes  both  parties  suffer  so,  and  by 
asking  too  much  lose  all.  Man  seldom  asks  much : 
if  only  a  wife  will  not  compromise  his  reputation  for 
attractiveness  while  maintaining  her  own  by  flirta- 
tion, if  she  will  accept  his  political  views,  acquire  a 
taste  for  his  favorite  holiday  resorts,  and  generally 
say,  "Yes,  darling",  or  "No,  darling",  opportunely, 
she  need  do  nothing,  she  has  only  "beautifully  to 
be."  He  is  not  so  fortunate,  however,  when  she 
wants  to  possess  him,  for  she  demands  that  he 
should  be  active,  that  the  pretty  words,  caresses, 
the  anxious  inquiries  after  health,  the  presents  of 
flowers  and  of  stalls  should  continue.  It  is  not 
enough  that  he  should  love  her ;  he  must  still  be  her 
231 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

lover.  When  she  is  not  sure  that  he  still  is  her  lover, 
a  madness  of  unrest  comes  over  her;  she  will 
lacerate  him,  she  will  invent  wishes  so  that  he  may 
thwart  them,  she  will  demand  his  society  when  she 
knows  it  is  mortgaged  to  another  occupation,  so 
that  she  may  suffer  his  refusal,  exaggerate  his 
indifference.     Here  are  cases  : 

M  21.  She:  "He  used  to  take  me  to  dances. 
The  other  day  he  wouldn't  come,  he  said  he  was 
tired.     He  wasn't  tired  when  we  were  engaged." 

The  Investigator :  "But  why  should  he  go  if  he 
didn't  want  to?" 

She  :  "Because  I  wanted  to." 

The  Investigator :  "But  he  didn't  want  to." 

She  :  "He  ought  to  take  pleasure  in  pleasing  me." 

(The  conversation  here  degenerates  into  a  dis- 
cussion on  duty  and  becomes  uninteresting.) 

M  4.  The  husband  is  a  doctor  with  a  very 
extended  city  practice.  He  is  busy  eleven  hours  a 
day  and  has  night  calls.  His  marriage  has  been 
spoilt  because  in  the  first  years  the  wife,  who  is 
young  and  gay,  could  not  understand  that  the  man, 
who  was  always  surrounded  by  people,  in  houses, 
streets,  conveyances,  should  not  desire  society. 
She  resented  his  wish  to  be  alone  for  some  hours,  to 
shut  himself  up.  There  were  tears,  and  like  most 
232 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

people  she  looked  ugly  when  she  cried.  She  was 
lonely,  and  when  one  is  lonely,  it  is  difficult  to 
realize  that  other  people  may  be  too  much  sur- 
rounded. 


A  great  deal  of  all  this,  however,  might  pass  away 
if  one  could  feel  that  it  would  not  last.  Nothing 
matters  that  does  not  last.  Only  one  must  be 
conscious  of  it,  and  in  marriage  many  people  are 
dully  aware  that  they  have  settled  down,  that  they 
have  drawn  the  one  and  only  ticket  they  can  ever 
hope  to  draw,  unless  merciful  death  steps  in. 
There  will  be  no  more  adventures,  no  more  excite- 
ments, no  more  marsh  fires,  which  one  knows 
deceptive  yet  loves  to  follow.  It  will  be  difficult 
to  move  to  other  towns  or  countries,  to  change  one's 
occupation ;  it  will  even  be  difficult  to  adopt  new 
poses,  for  the  other  will  not  be  taken  in.  One  will 
be  for  evermore  what  one  is.  True  there  is  elope- 
ment, divorce  ;  in  matters  of  art,  there  is  the  artist 
courage  that  enables  a  man  to  see  another  suffer 
for  the  sake  of  his  desire.  But  all  this  is  very 
difficult,  and  few  of  us  have  courage  enough  to  make 
others  suffer ;  if  one  had  the  courage  to  do  no  harm 
at  all,  it  might  not  be  so  bad,  but  not  many  can 
233 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

follow  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw:  "If  you  injure  your 
neighbor,  let  it  not  be  by  halves."  They  almost 
invariably  do  injure  by  halves :  he  that  will  not 
kill,  scratches.  There  is  no  refuge  from  a  world  of 
rates,  and  taxes,  and  bills,  and  houses  overcrowded 
by  children,  and  old  clothes,  dull  leaders  in  the 
papers,  stupid  plays,  the  morning  train,  the  unvary- 
ing Sunday  dinner.  It  is  so  bad  sometimes  that  it 
causes  willful  revolt.  I  sincerely  believe  that  a 
great  many  men  would  be  model  husbands  if  only 
they  were  not  married.  Only  when  everything  is 
respectable  and  nice  there  is  a  terrible  temptation 
to  introduce  a  change ;  the  wild  animal  in  man, 
that  is  in  a  few  a  lion,  in  most  a  weasel,  reacts 
against  the  definite,  the  irremediable,  the  assured. 
He  must  do  something.  He  must  break  through. 
He  must  prove  to  himself  that  he  has  not  really 
sentenced  himself  to  penal  servitude  for  life.  That 
is  why  so  few  of  the  respectable  are  respectable, 
and  why  reformed  rakes  do  make  good  husbands. 
(Generally,  that  is,  for  a  few  rakes  feel  that  they 
must  keep  up  their  reputation ;  on  the  other  hand, 
a  really  respectable  man  knows  no  shame.) 

Curiously   enough,   children  seem   to   act  both 
against  and  in  favor  of    these  disruptive  factors. 
It  is  difficult  to  deprive  children  of  influence ;  they 
234 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

must  part,  or  they  must  unite.  They  are  some- 
body in  the  house ;  they  make  a  noise,  and  it 
depends  upon  temperament  whether  the  noise 
exasperates  or  delights.  Parents  are  divided  into 
those  who  love  them,  and  those  who  bear  their 
children;  generally,  men  dislike  little  babies, 
unless  they  are  rather  strong  men  whom  weakness 
attracts,  or  unless  they  feel  pride  of  race,  while 
women,  excepting  those  who  live  only  for  light 
pleasures,  give  them  a  quite  unreasoning  affection. 
Children  are  a  frequent  source  of  trouble,  for  the 
tired  man's  nerves  are  horribly  frayed  by  screams 
and  exuberances.  He  shouts:  "Stop  that  child 
howling!"  and  if  his  wife  assumes  a  saintly  air 
and  says  that  "she  would  rather  hear  a  child  cry 
than  a  man  swear/'  the  door  opens  towards  the 
club  or  public  house.  Likewise,  a  man  who  has 
given  so  many  jewels  that  the  mother  of  the  Gracchi 
might  be  jealous,  will  never  understand  the  appall- 
ing weariness  that  can  come  over  the  mother  in  the 
evening,  when  she  has  administered,  say,  twelve 
meals,  four  or  eight  baths,  and  answered  several 
hundreds  of  questions  varying  between  the  exist- 
ence of  God  and  the  esoterics  of  the  steam  engine. 
Loving  the  children  too  much  to  blame  them,  she 
must  blame  some  one,  and  blames  him. 
235 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

People  do  not  confess  these  things,  but  the  socio- 
psychologist  must  remember  that  when  a  man 
quietly  picks  up  a  flower  pot  and  hurls  it  through 
the  window,  the  original  cause  may  be  found  in  the 
behavior  of  the  departmental  manager  six  hours 
before.  The  irritation  of  children  can  envenom 
two  lives,  for  it  seems  almost  inevitable  that  each 
party  should  think  the  other  spoils  or  tyrannizes. 
It  is  not  always  so,  and  sometimes  children  unite 
by  the  bond  of  a  common  love ;  very  much  more 
often  they  unite  by  the  burden  of  a  common 
responsibility.  Indeed,  it  is  this  financial  respon- 
sibility that  draws  two  people  close,  because  tied 
together  they  must  swim  together  or  sink  together, 
until  they  are  so  concerned  individually  with  their 
salvation  that  they  think  they  are  concerned  with 
the  salvation  of  the  other.  That  bond  of  union  is 
dangerous,  because  marriage  is  expensive,  and  be- 
cause one  tends  to  remember  the  time  when  bread 
was  not  so  dear  and  flesh  and  blood  so  cheap. 
There  is  affluence  in  bachelordom ;  there  is  atro- 
cious discomfort  too,  but  when  one  thinks  of  the 
good  old  times,  one  generally  forgets  all  except  the 
affluence.  Of  the  present,  one  sees  only  that  one 
cannot  take  the  whole  family  to  Yellowstone ;  of 
the  past,  one  does  not  see  the  sitting  room,  or  the 
236 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

hangings  on  which  the  landlady  merely  blew.  The 
wife  thinks  of  her  frocks,  garlands  of  the  sacrificial 
heifer,  the  husband  of  the  days  when  he  could 
afford  to  be  one  of  the  boys.  And,  as  soon 
as  the  past  grows  glamorous,  the  present  day 
grows  dull ;  always  because  one  must  blame  some- 
thing, one  blames  the  other.  It  is  so  much  more 
agreeable  to  spend  a  thousand  dollars  than  to 
spend  a  hundred,  even  if  one  gets  nothing  for  it. 
It  is  power.  It  is  excitement.  One  thinks  of 
money  until  one  may  come  to  think  of  nothing 
but  money,  until,  as  suggested  before,  a  husband 
turns  into  a  vaguely  disagreeable  person  who  can 
be  coaxed  into  paying  bills.  In  the  working  class 
especially  there  is  bitterness  among  the  women, 
who  before  their  marriage  knew  the  taste  of  inde- 
pendence and  of  earned  money  in  their  purses.  It 
is  a  great  love  that  can  compensate  a  woman  for  the 
loss  of  freedom  after  she  has  enjoyed  it. 

Nothing  indeed  can  compensate  a  woman  for 
this,  except  a  lover,  that  is  to  say,  a  return  to  an 
older  state.  That  is  to  what  she  turns,  for  strange 
as  it  may  seem,  marriage  does  not  vaccinate 
against  the  temptations  of  love.  She  does  not 
easily  love  again,  for  she  has  been  married,  and 
while  it  is  easy  to  love  again  when  one  has  been 
237 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

atrociously  betrayed,  just  because  one  invests  the 
new  with  everything  that  the  old  held  back,  it  is 
difficult  to  love  again  when  the  promised  love 
turned  merely  to  dullness.  There  is  nothing  to 
strike  against.  There  is  no  contrast,  and  so  women 
slip  into  relationships  that  are  silly,  because  there 
is  nothing  real  behind  them.  Boredom  is  the  root 
of  all  evil,  and  I  doubt  whether  busy  and  happy 
women  seek  adventure,  for  few  of  them  want  it  for 
adventure's  sake :  they  seek  only  satisfaction. 
That  is  what  most  men  cruelly  misunderstand ; 
they  blame  woman  instead  of  searching  out  their 
own  remissness.  Sins  of  omission  matter  more 
than  sins  of  commission,  more  even  than  infidelities, 
for  love,  which  is  all  a  woman's  life,  is  only  a  momen- 
tous incident  in  that  of  a  man.  Love  may  be  the 
discovery  of  a  happiness,  but  man  remains  con- 
scious of  many  other  delights.  Woman  is  seldom 
like  that.  You  will  imagine  a  man  and  a  woman 
who  have  blundered  upon  mutual  understanding 
standing  upon  the  hill  from  which  Moses  saw 
Canaan.  The  woman  would  fill  her  eyes  with 
Canaan,  and  could  see  nought  else,  while  the  man 
gazing  at  the  promised  land  would  still  be  conscious 
of  other  countries.  In  the  heart  of  a  man  who  is 
worth  anything  at  all,  love  must  have  rivals,  — 
238 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

art,  science,  ambition,  —  and  it  is  a  delight  to 
woman  that  there  should  be  rivals  to  overcome, 
even  though  it  be  a  poor  slave  she  tie  to  her  chariot 
wheels. 

Marriage  does  not  always  sutler  when  people 
drift  away  from  their  allegiance ;  in  countries  such 
as  France  notably,  where  many  husbands  and 
wives  do  not  think  it  necessary  to  trust,  or  tactful 
to  watch  each  other,  the  problem  does  not  set  itself 
so  sharply.  It  is  mainly  in  Anglo-Saxon  countries 
where  the  little  blue  flower  has  its  altars  that  the 
trouble  begins.  A  rather  fascinating  foreigner 
said  to  me  once  :  "  Englishwomen  are  very  trouble- 
some ;  they  are  either  so  light  that  they  do  not 
understand  you  when  you  tell  them  you  love  them, 
or  so  deep  that  you  must  elope  every  time.  This  is 
a  difficult  country."  I  do  not  want  to  seem  cyni- 
cal, but  the  polygamous  nature  of  man  is  so  ill- 
recognized  and  the  boredom  of  woman  such  a 
national  institution  that  when  it  is  too  late  to  pre- 
tend that  that  which  has  happened  has  not  hap- 
pened, most  of  the  mischief  has  already  been  done. 
Why  a  husband  or  wife  who  has  found  attraction 
in  another  should  immediately  treat  his  partner 
abominably  is  not 'easily  understood,  for  falling  in 
love  with  the  present  victim  need  not  make  him 
239 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

rude  or  remiss  to  the  rest  of  the  world.  But  the 
British  are  a  strange  and  savage  people.  Also, 
when  in  doubt  they  get  drunk,  so  I  fear  I  must 
leave  a  clearer  recognition  of  polygamous  instincts 
to  the  slow-growing  enlightenment  of  the  mind  of 
man. 

He  is  growing  enlightened ;  at  least  he  is  infi- 
nitely more  educated  than  he  was,  for  he  has  begun 
to  recognize  that  woman  is  to  a  certain  extent  a 
human  being,  a  savage,  a  barbarian,  but  entitled 
to  the  consideration  generally  given  to  the  Hotten- 
tot. I  do  not  think  woman  will  always  be  savage, 
though  I  hope  she  will  not  turn  into  the  clear-eyed, 
weather-beaten  mate  that  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  likes  to 
think  of  —  for  the  future.  She  has  come  to  look  upon 
man  as  an  equation  that  can  be  solved.  He,  too, 
in  a  sense,  and  both  are  to-day  much  less  inclined 
than  they  were  fifty  years  ago  to  overlook  a  chance 
of  pleasing.  It  is  certain  that  men  and  women 
to-day  dress  more  deliberately  for  each  other  than 
they  ever  did  before,  that  they  lead  each  other, 
sometimes  with  dutiful  unwillingness,  to  the  theatre 
or  the  country ;  it  is  very  painful  sometimes,  this 
organization  of  pleasure,  but  it  is  necessary  because 
dull  lives  are  bad  lives,  and  better  fall  into  the 
river  than  never  go  to  the  river  at  all.  It  is  dan- 
240 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

gerous  and  vain  to  take  up  the  attitude,  "I  alone 
am  enough."  Yet  many  do :  as  one  walks  along  a 
suburban  street,  where  every  window  is  shut,  where 
every  dining  room  has  its  aspidistra  in  a  pot,  one 
realizes  that  scores  of  people  are  busily  heaping 
ash  upon  the  once  warm  fire  of  their  love.  The 
stranger  is  the  alternative;  he  obscures  small 
quarrels;  if  the  stranger  is  beautiful,  he  urges  to 
competition;  if  he  is  inferior,  he  soothes  pride. 
But  above  all,  the  stranger  is  change,  therefore 
hope.  The  stranger  is  an  insurance  against  loss 
of  personal  pride ;  he  compels  adornment,  for  what 
is  "good  enough  for  my  husband"  is  not  good 
enough  for  the  lady  over  the  way.  The  stranger 
serves  the  pleasure  lust,  this  violent  passion  of  man, 
and  cannot  harm  him  because  the  lust  for  pleasure, 
within  the  limits  of  hysteria,  involves  a  desire  for 
good  looks,  for  elegance,  for  gaiety ;  above  all,  love 
of  pleasure  was  reviled  of  our  fathers,  and  whatever 
our  fathers  thought  bad  is  become  a  good  thing. 
Our  fathers  did  not  understand  certain  forms  of 
pride :  there  is  more  than  pride  of  body  in  good 
looks,  good  clothes,  and  showing  off  before  ac- 
quaintances: there  is  achievement,  which  means 
pride  of  conquest.  I  imagine  that  the  happiest 
couple  in  the  world  is  the  one  where  each  lives  in 
241 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

perpetual  fear  that  somebody  will  run  away  with 
the  other. 

Looking  at  it  broadly,  I  see  marriage  as  a  Chinese 
puzzle,  almost,  but  not  quite,  insoluble.  Spoilt  by 
coldness,  spoilt  by  ardour,  spoilt  by  excess,  spoilt 
by  indifference,  spoilt  by  obedience,  by  stupidity, 
by  self-assertion,  spoilt  by  familiarity,  spoilt  by 
ignorance.  Spoilt  in  every  possible  way  that  man 
can  invent.  Spoilt  by  every  ounce  of  influence  a 
jealous  or  ironical  world  can  muster,  spoilt  by  habit, 
by  contrast,  by  obtuseness  quite  as  much  as  by 
overdose  understanding.  And  yet  it  stands.  It 
stands  because  there  is  nothing  much  to  put  into 
its  place,  because  marriage  is  the  only  road  that 
leads  a  man  away  from  his  dinner  when  he  is  forty- 
five,  or  teaches  a  woman  to  preserve  her  complex- 
ion. It  stands  like  most  human  things,  because  it 
is  the  better  of  two  bad  alternatives.  Only  because 
it  stands  we  must  not  think  that  it  will  never 
change.  All  things  change,  otherwise  one  could 
not  bear  them.  I  suspect  that  marriage,  that  was 
once  upon  a  time  the  taking  of  a  woman  by  a  man, 
which  has  now  grown  legalized,  and  may  become 
courteous,  will  turn  into  a  very  skilled  occupation. 
It  will  be  recognized  still  more  than  now  that  all 
freedom  need  not  be  lost  after  putting  on  the  wed- 
242 


SOME   NOTES   ON   MARRIAGE 

ding  ring.  As  legal  right  and  privilege  grow,  as 
women  develop  private  earnings,  a  consciousness  of 
worth  must  arise.  Already  women  realize  their 
value  and  demand  its  recognition.  If  they  demand 
it  long  enough,  they  will  get  it.  I  suspect  that  the 
economic  problem  is  at  the  root  of  the  marriage 
problem,  for  people  are  not  indiscriminate  in  their 
relationships,  and  even  Don  Juan,  after  a  while, 
longs  to  be  faithful,  if  only  somebody  could  teach 
him  how  to  be  it.  Marriage  can  be  made  close 
only  by  making  divorce  easy,  by  extending  female 
labor.  For  labor  makes  woman  less  attractive 
and  to  be  attractive  is  rather  a  trap :  how  much 
higher  can  a  woman  rise?  But  the  economic 
freedom  of  woman  will  mean  that  she  need  not 
bind  herself ;  she  will  be  able  to  break  away,  and 
in  those  days  she  will  be  most  completely  bound, 
for  who  would  run  away  from  a  jail  if  the  door  were 
always  left  open  ? 

I  detest  Utopia,  and  these  things  seem  so  far 
away  that  I  am  more  content  to  take  marriage  as 
it  is  in  the  hope  that  unhealthy  novels,  unnecessary 
discussions,  unwholesome  views,  and  unnatural 
feelings  may  little  by  little  reform  mankind. 
Meanwhile,  I  hold  fast  to  the  private  maxim  that 
hardly  anything  is  unendurable  if  one  sets  up  that 
243 


SOME   NOTES  ON   MARRIAGE 

all  mankind  could  not  give  one  a  quite  worthy  mate. 
But  there  is  another  alleviation:  understanding 
not  only  that  one  is  married  to  somebody  else,  but 
also  that  somebody  else  is  married  to  yourself,  and 
that  it  is  quite  as  hard  for  the  other  party.  There 
are  many  excellent  things  to  be  done;  here  are  a 
few: 

(i)  Do  not  open  each  other's  letters.  (For  one 
reason  you  might  not  like  the  contents.) 
And  try  not  to  look  liberal  if  you  don't  even 
glance  at  the  address  or  the  postmark. 

(2)  Vary  your  pursuits,  your  conversation,   and 

your  clothes.     If  required,  vary  your  hair. 

(3)  If  you  absolutely  must  be  sincere,  let  it  be  in 

private. 

(4)  (Especially    for    wives.)     Find    out    on    the 

honeymoon  whether  crying  or  swearing  is  the 
more  effective. 

(5)  Once  a  day  say  to  a  wife :  "I  love  you"  ;  to  a 

husband:  "How  strong  you  are!"  If  the 
latter  remark  is  ridiculous,  say:  "How 
clever  you  are  !"  for  everybody  believes  that. 

(6)  Forgive   your   partner   seventy    times   seven. 

Then  burn  the  ledger. 


244 


IROM-'REFERII 

i 

SWVAD'Q3S 


By  the  author  of  "  The  Second  Blooming 


THE  STRANGERS'  WEDDING 


By  W.  L.  GEORGE 
12mo.    Cloth.    450  pages.    $1.35  net. 


Readers  of  "The  Second  Blooming,"  one  of  the  most  dis- 
cussed novels  of  1915,  will  welcome  the  announcement  of 
another  novel  of  married  life  by  this  talented  English  author. 

"The  Strangers'  Wedding"  is  the  story  of  Roger  Huncote, 
a  young  man  of  the  upper  classes  who,  inflamed  with  philan- 
thropic ideals,  joins  a  settlement  to  work  among  the  poor.  He  is 
speedily  undeceived  as  to  the  usefulness  of  the  movement  and 
the  worthiness  of  those  who  control  it,  and  conceiving  an  un- 
reasonable disgust  of  his  own  class,  marries  the  daughter  of  a 
washerwoman.  Realizing  that  there  may  be  little  difficulties, 
he  believes  that  when  two  people  care  deeply  for  each  other 
nothing  else  can  matter.  But  Huncote  has  much  to  learn; 
and  most  of  the  story  is  concerned  with  the  pitiful  mis- 
understandings between  the  young  husband  and  the  young 
wife,  both  of  whom  are  charming  but  as  unable  to  meet  as  east 
and  west.  Mr.  George  indicates  with  much  psychological 
subtlety  the  reversion  of  the  "strangers"  to  their  own  class, 
which  ultimately  leads  them  to  a  happy  ending. 

This  novel  is  throughout  pathetic,  but  it  contains  a  great 
deal  of  broad  humor  and  deserves  its  sub-title,  "The  Comedy 
of  a  Romantic.  " 


LITTLE,  BROWN  &  CO.,  Publishers 
34  Beacon  Street,  Boston 


By  the  Author  of  "The  Stranger's  Wedding' 


THE  SECOND  BLOOMING 


By  W.  L.  GEORGE 

12  mo.    438  pages.    $1.35  net 


A  strong  and  thoughtful  story. — New  York  World. 

A  story  of  amazing  power  and  insight.  —  Washington  Evening 
Star. 

Mr.  George  is  one  of  the  Englishmen  to  be  reckoned  with. 
One  now  says  Wells,  Galsworthy,  Bennett — and  W.  L.  George. 

—  New  York  Globe. 

This  writer  has  entered  with  more  courage  and  intensity  into 
the  inner  sanctuaries  of  life  than  Mr.  Howells  and  Mr.  Bennett 
have  cared  to  do.  —  Chicago  Tribune. 

Mr.  George  follows  a  vein  of  literary  brilliancy  that  is  all  his 
own,  and  his  study  of  feminine  maturity  will  find  ample  vindica- 
tion the  round  world  over.  —  Philadelphia  North  American. 

It  is  a  book  which  is  bound  to  appeal  to  women,  for  it  is  so 
extraordinarily  true  to  life ;  so  many  women  have  passed  and  are 
passing  through  remarkably  similar  experiences.  —  London 
Evening  Standard. 

It  is  perhaps  the  biggest  piece  of  fiction  that  the  present  season 
has  known.  The  present  reviewer  may  frankly  say,  without  exag- 
geration, that  he  has  not  had  a  treat  of  similar  order  since  the  still 
memorable  day  when  he  first  made  the  acquaintance  of  Mr. 
Galsworthy's  "Man  of  Property."  —  Frederic  T.  Cooper  in  the 
Bookman  (N.  Y.). 


LITTLE,  BROWN   &   CO.,  Publishers 
34  Beacon  Street,  Boston 


The  Racial  Characteristics  of  French  and  English 


THE  LITTLE  BELOVED 


By  W.  L.  GEORGE 

12mo.     Cloth.     $1.35  net 


Not  since  Thackeray,  indeed,  has  any  English  novelist  done  a 
more  impressive  study  of  the  typical  Englishman.  It  is  not 
only  a  good  story;  it  is  a  notable  study  of  national  character.  — 
Baltimore  Sun. 

Not  merely  a  splendid  opportunity  for  contrast  between  the 
temperamental  differences  of  French  and  English,  but  a  narrative 
of  earnest  merit.  We  are  met  by  a  full  world  of  English  char- 
acters. —  New  York  Post. 

First  and  last,  interesting.  It  is  crowded  with  impressions, 
glimpses,  and  opinions.  There  are  many  characters  and  they 
are  all  living.  .  .  .  Reading  his  book  is  a  real  adventure,  by 
no  means  to  be  missed.  —  New  York  Times. 

A  vigorous  novel  based  upon  the  process  —  constructive  and 
destructive — whereby  a  typical  French  youth,  mercurial,  pas- 
sionate, spectacular,  is  transformed  into  a  staid  and  stolid 
English  householder  and  husband.  —  Chicago  Herald. 

Mr.  George,  one  of  the  most  promising  of  the  younger  English 
writers,  has  shown  the  process  of  naturalization  from  a  more 
striking  viewpoint,  in  this  story  of  the  changing  of  a  Frenchman 
into  an  English  citizen.  With  this  purpose  and  his  nervous, 
irritable  nature  trouble  is  sure  to  ensue,  and  he  has  adventures  in 
plenty. —  Boston  Transcript. 


LITTLE,  BROWN  &  CO.,  Publishers 
34  Beacon  Street,  Boston 


"Once  read,  will  not  quickly  be  forgotten."  —  Providence  Journal. 


UNTIL  THE  DAY  BREAK 


By  W.  L.  GEORGE 

12  mo.     Cloth.     $1.35  net. 


Mr.  George's  study  of  the  evolution  of  this  Israel  Kalisch  is  a 
remarkable  work  in  realistic  fiction.  —  New  York  World. 

A  novel  of  more  than  usual  value.  .  .  .  It  is  a  life-drama, 
such  as  is  going  on  continually  in  London  and  New  York.  — 

Hearst's  Magazine. 

The  story  contains  a  very  pretty  love  element  .  .  .  Such  an 
objective  picture  as  is  here  presented  will  do  more  than  sermons 
to  reveal  the  futility  of  the  sacrifice  which  anarchy  sometimes 
makes  of  noble  minds.  —  New  York  Post. 

Mr.  George  unquestionably  has  the  gift  of  description,  not 
only  of  places  but  of  men.  Kalisch,  egotistic,  self-confident, 
fearless,  making  his  way  from  Gallicia  through  Hungary  to  starve 
and  fight  in  New  York,  is  an  impressive  conception.  —  The 
Bookman. 

Israel,  Warsch,  Leimeritz,  the  various  women  who  successively 
love  Israel,  they  are  so  true,  so  vital  that  we  can  almost  see  and 
hear  them  speak  and  breathe.  Yes,  this  is  a  great  novel,  even 
though  it  alternately  fires  and  freezes  the  very  marrow  of  the 
soul.  —  Chicago  Herald. 


LITTLE,  BROWN  &  CO.,  Publishers 
34  Beacon  Street,  Boston 


University  of 
Connecticut 

Libraries 


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